(Submitted photo/Christina Charles)

By Nolan Kowal

Personal best

P.A. triathlete overcomes bike scare to set personal best time

Oct 17, 2023 | 5:00 PM

Prince Albert’s Christina Charles had a rocky start to her Ironman World Championship experience in Hawaii.

The triathlete described how her bike was damaged in transport and she wasn’t sure if she would be able to compete.

“When we got in late Tuesday night, my bike did not arrive,” Charles said. “And then Wednesday when it did arrive, I wasn’t able to get it together because there’s a plastic part that holds the bolts that hold the handle bars down, and it broke.”

“But fortunately they have amazing bike technicians here at the world championships as well as Trek, which is the brand of my bike. They had Trek reps here and they were able to get me the part, and my bike ran fantastic on race day.”

Charles set a personal best time in the overall race at 10 hours and 18 minutes. She also set personal bests in both the bike split and swimming portions of the event.

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“I had a great ocean swim, it was only my fifth time swimming in the ocean, so I thought I did pretty good dealing with the saltwater, the swells, and there was quite a few competitors in the water so just trying to navigate that. And then I had the bike of my life,” Charles said, who was competing in Hawaii for just the second time.

She said she also had to contend with challenging weather conditions.

“It was incredibly hot on Saturday and there were definitely some headwinds which makes for challenging conditions, but I had a 35-minute personal best bike split, which is huge, so coming off the bike I was in a really good position,” Charles said.

Charles said her goal coming into the race was to finish before the sun went down, which she did.

After spending countless hours preparing for the world championship race, Charles said she plans to take a step back.

“”Probably more of a down year next year, doing a few shorter races,” Charles said. “I trained for the Ironman three years in a row, so I kind of need a bit of a break now.”

“This is what I was building towards…I had to qualify to come here.”

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nolan.kowal@pattisonmedia.com