Former NFL Pittsburgh Steelers star Hines Ward added a new title to his resume Saturday in Hawaii. Meet Hines “Ironman” Ward.
The two-time Super Bowl winner took on one of the world’s most challenging triathlon courses and finished in 13 hours, 8 minutes and 15 seconds.
When asked how he enjoyed his first race, he said, “I had a blast, but I was very nervous in the sense that it was my first time, so I didn’t know what to expect, being out there with other people, because I’ve been training by myself and through Paula. She emails me what I’m supposed to do and I just go by what’s she puts on my email. And I’m on the Map My Fitness App thing, so I can’t hide from her [laughs] – she sees me working out every day – she knows when I don’t work out if she doesn’t get an alert on her phone. But it was overwhelming in the sense of how everyone kind of welcomed me to the triathlon world. Everyone was very positive and very encouraging. When I felt tired and felt like walking, everyone kept giving me high-fives like ‘good job Hines, keep it up!’ so I’m just running like, ‘I can’t stop now’ but all in all, it was good. It was totally different than what I’ve been doing my whole life training for football. It’s basically on the opposite end of the spectrum – trying to be an endurance athlete. But I’m happy with it. It was a good first trial I guess. Our goal was to finish in an hour thirty, I ended up finishing in an hour twenty-seven, so anytime you accomplish your goal, it’s a great day. But I still have a long ways to go. Now we start to go up in intensity and more miles, the longer, harder and more excruciating all the events will become now.”
Ward was the 1,680th athlete to cross the finish line after a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a full 26.2-mile marathon. He swam a 1:20:01, biked a 06:21:12 and finished off with a 5:12:56 run.
Click here to check out some photos of Ward before, during and after the triathlon here.
