Ruth Astle: The cream rises to the top winning first-ever Ironman (Mallorca)
This weekend saw the crèam rise to the top as Ruth Astle took her first ever IRONMAN win at Ironman Mallorca 2021.
Up against a stacked field of world class athletes Ruth Astle showed she can now mix it with the best. Having had a superb swim exiting the water with the main group albeit over 5 minutes down on the lead swimmer. Ruth is renown as a bit of a bike beast and did not disappoint setting the fastest bike spilt of the day which keep her in contention with multiple Swedish national cycling champion, Lisa Norden, recent winner of Ironman Lake Placid, who entered T2 with a 4 minutes lead.
Into the run, Ruth maintained her stride and pulled back Norden’s lead, overtaking the Swede as she pushed on to the winning tape in a time of 8:59:15 to earn the biggest result of her career.
Who is the woman behind the name Ruth Astle? Having achieved her goal of taking the women’s overall age-group win at the Ironman World Championships back in 2019, Ruth Astle’s next goal was to fulfil her ambition to become the best in the world and turned professional in order to achieve that ambition.
Ruth rapid climb to the top of the ever more challenging heights of the age group Ironman competition was achieved whilst holding down a 60-hour week job in the corporate world of banking.
After putting many good results together and being part of the Zwift Academy triathlon team, her age group career concluded when she took the overall age-group win at the Ironman World Championships in a time of 9:20:06.
In January 2020, with the support of her employer, Lloyds Banking Group, Ruth reduced her working hours down to a minimum as she set out on her professional career. In her first couple of seasons despite the pandemic Ruth qualified for Kona 2021 (re-scheduled for 2022), set a new bike course record at Ironman Florida 2020 and is now ranked as one of the top 50 women professionals in the world.
Since she competed in her first age-group Ironman in 2017 her metronomic rise to the top of the professional rankings is an extraordinary story.
Ruth Astle talks openly about her transition to pro racing with the Trination Podcast Crew.
When the race season stalled because of coronavirus last year the TriNation Podcast Team of Luke and Andrew were able to get to know who is behind the face of Ruth Astle We discussed her transition to pro racing, where her competitiveness comes from and spoke openly about her nutrition strategy for the Ironman distance as well as how the mental strength of an Ironman athlete is key to her putting out performances.
