She did the Ironman World Championship 3 weeks after UTMB

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[Editor’s note: Lucy Bartholomew finished fifth in the 25-29 age group on September 22 in the women’s Ironman World Championship in Nice, France, in 10 hours, 53 minutes, 51 seconds. She posted a 1:16:48 swim split, a 6:16:20 bike split, and a 3:11:39 run split.]

Lucy Bartholomew thrives on monster challenges. Last year, she became just the second woman to complete ultrarunning and triathlon’s two biggest challenges—the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc and the Ironman World Championship—in the same year.

The 28-year-old Australian is back to do it again. But this time, the ante has been upped: while she had six weeks to recover from her 10th-place finish at UTMB before taking on Kona, this year she had just three weeks after yet another 10th-place showing at UTMB before toeing the line in Nice.

While most of her ultrarunning comrades kicked back for the offseason, Bartholomew took her INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster 4×4 truck from Chamonix, France, to Girona, Spain, for a train-to-recover camp. The vehicle is 18 feet long, 7 feet wide, 6.5 feet high, and weighs 2.6 tons–an interesting contrast to the sleek, aero bike she races on in triathlon.

From UTMB to Ironman World Championship

UTMB—the pinnacle of ultra trail running—is a 108-mile race with 32,800 feet of elevation that circumnavigates the Mont Blanc massif and passes through France, Italy, and Switzerland. Down the road in Nice, France, this year’s women’s Ironman World Championship will take place on one of the harshest courses on the planet: swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles. The bike course is particularly notorious, taking place in the mountains around Nice with 7,963 feet of elevation gain.

In fact, when Bartholomew, a professional trail runner and self-proclaimed triathlon newbie, saw the bike course profile, she said she’d rather run it.

“It looks beautiful, and it’s interesting,” she says. “But there’s also a 28-kilometer climb, which is crazy. That’s super long. And what I’m more nervous about is the descending because you also need to fuel up for the run to come, and you need to be relaxed but focused. I love climbing, and I’m really happy to get to go up the mountain, but I think I can probably climb hard and almost outride myself for the first bit and then recover from it and hope that I can run off it.”

A multidisciplinary mindset

In ultrarunning, Bartholomew races for longer and goes through long nights running over mountain passes with limited sleep. Though it may sound like there’s no contrast to the one-day Ironman triathlon, she says the lessons from one sport often help her with another. For example, triathlon training has helped her dial in her fueling strategies.

“I found that the triathlon training has set me up for really good fueling in ultrarunning. On the bike, I can eat super well: my intensity is a lot lower, and I’ve been able to take in a lot more,” she says. “So I train my stomach on the bike, and then what works, I take to the run, I test it in training, and if it passes the test, I’ll take it to a race. It’s been revolutionary, and one of the reasons why I’m doing better in the running is from that bike riding and then fueling.”

On the flip side, the strong mindset and grit she’s cultivated on the trails have helped her succeed in long-distance triathlon.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to endure those moments to realize that with it comes the other side. You can feel like you’re on death’s door, and then you can be up and feeling like you’re living your best life.

“I’ve always put a lot of pride in my relentless optimism,” she says. “You know, I think it’s what keeps us going. In ultrarunning, I’m vomiting right now, but maybe in an hour, things will turn. And they’ve turned enough times that I have faith that it will happen. Sometimes, you’ve just got to endure those moments to realize that with it comes the other side. You can feel like you’re on death’s door, and then you can be up and feeling like you’re living your best life. Having that knowledge, I feel like I have enough tools in my tool belt to endure.”

But when she says tools, unfortunately, she doesn’t mean actual tools to fix her bike, should she have a mechanical issue. “If anything happens to my bike, I don’t know what to do with that,” she says of her triathlon shortcomings. “I don’t have actual tools, I have mental tools, but I still think it’s the biggest strength.”

But, critically, swimming has always come naturally to her, partly because her father manages a swimming pool, and because—let’s be honest—most Aussies are natural-born swimmers.

“Swimming, for me, is like therapy. I put my head in the water, and it’s just beautiful. No one looks at or speaks to you now; it’s just you in the water. I have always loved swimming, and I’ve always been thrown into the pool as a kid. I also do a fair bit of surfing, and I’m comfortable in the ocean, which is huge. I’m not an efficient or skilled swimmer. I’ve got the engine. I don’t have the beautiful stroke that captures a lot of water and pushes me forward, but I can do it, and it doesn’t take anything out of me.”

While many newer swimmers pray for a wetsuit-legal swim in Nice, she didn’t even bring one with her for the race. After a shoulder injury, she struggles in the neoprene, so she opts to go without.

How Lucy Bartholomew balances ultrarunning and Ironman triathlon

When Bartholomew raced her first Ironman (Western Australia in December 2022), she qualified for the 2023 Ironman World Championships. She took her spot, despite saying she only wanted to do one Ironman. She also signed up for another race in 2023, Ironman Cairns, and qualified again for the 2024 Ironman World Championship.

Clearly, her “one and done” Ironman plans didn’t come to pass, but Bartholomew says ultrarunning (training and racing for ultras) remains her number one focus.

“Last year, when I trained for UTMB and Kona, I was doing triathlon training in the lead-up to UTMB. But what I realized was that to perform at UTMB, you need to be training for UTMB, and you can’t be sharing your focus,” she says. “The sport is beyond that now, so I was just running the last six to eight weeks before UTMB. It was 100-mile weeks consistently of just running.”

Long-distance triathlon, as crazy as it sounds, is her cross-training for her primary pursuit.

“It’s a very unique setup. My coach, Jason Koop, doesn’t love it, but doesn’t program any cycling or swimming; I do that based on my energy levels, my time, and if I feel like it,” she says. “I don’t need to do it to get the green circle on training peaks. It’s like, Oh, it’s a nice afternoon. I might just ride, or I need to go to this shop and the grocery store, or I need to get into town, and I don’t want to drive. I’ll just ride and swim. Or because my friends are going, or my dad owns the pools and runs the pools around my house.”

Triathlon training and racing is a safe place for her, an opportunity to refresh from the professionalism and hyper-focus she embraces in ultrarunning. That’s why, after another world-class top-10 performance at UTMB this month, where she shaved an hour and 40 minutes off her time on a hot day, she was just fine with driving seven hours to Girona to stay with her friends for recovery and refreshment before driving back up to Nice for the Ironman World Championship race. The time was exactly the mental reset she needed, allowing her to transition to an offseason mindset – even if that offseason includes one of the world’s most grueling triathlons.

“If I need to stop in Nice because I dug too deep at UTMB and my body doesn’t want to do it, then it’s fine by me,” she says. “This is not my sport. I do this for enjoyment and pleasure, not because I’m a professional. Of course, I want to get the best out of myself, but I don’t put the pressure on and don’t have the pressure here.”