Tucson Citizen
Bryan Lee
Florida finish sends Pansing to Hawaii World Championships
The swim is relaxing, the bike ride is thunderous and the run is his money move. But what Craig Pansing has liked best about the triathlon lately has been the nice surprises.
He was elated when he won the Tucson Triathlon, covering the 825-yard swim, 12-mile bike ride and 3-mile run in 55 minutes, 55 seconds. It was the same race in which four years earlier as a University of Arizona student he was buried in 26th place, four minutes slower.
"It was a P.R. (personal record) and the biggest event I had ever gone," Pansing said at the time. "It was a thrill. You go a lot faster when you have all your friends there and you know the course."
That and a modest disclaimer. "I picked a day when the faster athletes didn't happen to be there," he said.
Not one to shout up his achievements, Pansing, a Catalina Foothills High School graduate, nevertheless possesses a very confident manner. His ego was bursting at the seams last fall when he shocked himself with a sub-10-hour time in the Florida Ironman - a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run - to qualify for this year's Hawaii World Championships. His main goals for his first full Ironman was to have fun and hope to finish the race.
"About mile 40 of the (112-mile) bike ride, I really started to respect this race," he said. "And that's when I thought 10 hours might be a pretty reasonable goal. Finishing it in 9:51:27 was most exciting."
But there's more to the dramatics. He finished third in his 18-to-24 age group but only the first two qualify. No problem. Hang around the next day and to see if one of two vacates the spot by moving to the pro level.
"They started calling names then . . .," Pansing said, and his following yelp need not be described.
Pansing, 25, now a third-year UA optical engineering student and former UA cross country runner, has made "gradual progression" in triathlon in four years from the time he had the whim of trying swimming for an activity change.
"I went to this class and 12-year-old girls were passing me," he said. "I thought this might not be for me but maybe I could use my run skills with it. The next year I joined the (UA) Tricats."
It's a club sport triathlon team that Pansing led with his 17th-place finish last year in the national collegiate (Olympic distance) championships - 0.93-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike ride and 6.2-mile run.
Longer distances were already calling. Four months earlier he received another surprise, finishing ninth overall in the Soma Half-Ironman in Tempe.
"That distance is tough but not as painful as the short (Olympic) distance when you're sprinting all the way," he said. "My endurance threshold is probably a lot better than my pain threshold."
Adrenaline can make one do bold things.
"The following weekend we all signed up for the Florida (Ironman) a year in advance," he said. "Our fate was sealed. No turning back.
At Panama City, Fla., Pansing led mates Matt Beauregard (22nd in the 25-29 age group, 10:19:18), Michael Cortes (15th in the 18-24 group, 11:20:46) and injury-recovering Greg Dion (107th in the 25-29s, 14:56:33).
They had a good time, feasting on carrot cake for Dion's birthday after the 2.4-mile open ocean swim. And Pansing even had a little fun on the marathon run.
"The pro winner (Belgium's Marino Vanhoenacker, 8:28:26) was about to lap me, so I ran with him to see how long I could hold him off," he said. "It worked for a while but I realized it was probably not a good idea.
"I was pretty a happy with myself, though, but I paid for it on the second lap. I had thought of running in with him with all the pictures and celebration. How cool would that be?"
