Women For Tri®, a program of The IRONMAN Foundation launched by IRONMAN and Life Time Fitness in 2015, works to increase female participation at all levels of triathlon. The program seeks to identify and diminish primary barriers to entry and mobilize triathlon advocates to encourage and engage female athletes across all race distances and representing all athletic abilities. Since inception, over $300,000 in grant funding has been awarded to triathlon clubs supporting female participation initiatives. Women For Tri embodies the heart and soul of what makes the sport so rewarding: testing your ability, overcoming challenges, and realizing the full depth of your potential in the most widely recognized test of endurance – triathlon.

Join the 55,000+ women in the Women For Tri Facebook forum, a place to discuss all things women, training, and triathlon. This is a group administered by the IRONMAN / Women For Tri Committee of Advisors. It’s a place for female athletes, from newbie to advanced athletes, to discuss all things training.

I spent countless hours this year training for my first IRONMAN race—long rides on the weekends, early-morning runs, swims after work. Though I was devoting so much time to preparing for the race, it seemed surreal that I was actually going to attempt to cover such a long distance in one day. I’d only ever done Olympic-distance triathlons before; now I was going to try to do about four times that mileage within one 17-hour stretch? Was I completely crazy?

A month before I was supposed to travel to Panama City, Florida, for the race, I still hadn’t wrapped my head around what I was about to embark on. At that point, I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to interview several inspirational women who were about to race the IRONMAN World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Their stories were amazing because of all the obstacles they’d overcome: blindness, breast cancer, the loss of a husband in military combat. I was especially moved by their experiences, though, because all these women seemed so real. They were all just regular people, like me, balancing work and family and squeezing training in somewhere in between it all. Mirinda Carfrae is a badass and incredibly inspirational, but almost super-human. Speaking with these female age-group athletes, I realized how you don’t have to be a world-class competitor to cross the line at an IRONMAN race; you just need to have the drive and put in the time.

That’s the message IRONMAN and Life Time want to extend to women across the country with their new nationwide “Women for Tri” initiative. By increasing awareness and interest in the sport of triathlon, along with providing content and training resources, the program aims to unite and empower female athletes of all fitness levels and help them reach their goals.

A Wanda Sports Holdings company, IRONMAN operates a global portfolio of events that includes the IRONMAN^®Triathlon Series, the IRONMAN^® 70.3^® Triathlon Series, 5150™ Triathlon Series, the Rock n’ Roll Marathon Series^®, Iron Girl^®, IRONKIDS^®, International Triathlon Union World Triathlon Series races, road cycling events including the UCI Velothon Majors Series, mountain bike races including the Absa Cape Epic, premier marathons including the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon and other multisport races. IRONMAN’s events, together with all other Wanda Sports Holdings events, provide more than a million participants annually the benefits of endurance sports through the company’s vast offerings. The iconic IRONMAN ^® Series of events is the largest participation sports platform in the world. Since the inception of the IRONMAN^® brand in 1978, athletes have proven that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE^® by crossing finish lines at the world’s most challenging endurance races. Beginning as a single race, IRONMAN has grown to become a global sensation with more than 200 events across 50 countries. For more information, visit www.ironman.com.

The IRONMAN Foundation® creates positive, tangible change in IRONMAN race communities by engaging athletes and volunteers to participate in programs that demonstrate service through sport and commitment to community. Since 2003, over $50,000,000 has been provided through IRONMAN Foundation programs to more than 8,300 local, regional, national and global nonprofit initiatives. Through these partnerships, IRONMAN athletes are powerfully linked to the community and together we leave the IRONMAN legacy behind in our race communities long after event day. For more information on IRONMAN Foundation programs, including Team IMF, Community Fund, Your Journey Your Cause, and Women For Tri, visit www.ironmanfoundation.org.