By Callum Ludwig
A Healesville triathlete is realising her dreams, competing in some of the biggest vents in the world.
Lara Cann has run and swam almost her whole life, before getting into bike riding later on, and 10 years ago set her sights on competing in the IRONMAN World Championships in Kailua Kona, Hawaii.
Ms Cann said she first visited Kona in 2014.
“I saw (American surfer) Sunny Garcia and a bunch of other people finishing the world championships and went ‘Yeah, I really want to give that a crack, that was awesome’ and I think I’d done my first triathlon by then, so that became my goal,” she said.
“I’m not an eight or ten-hour IRONMANn athlete, I was hoping to qualify as a legacy spot, which means you have to do twelve IRONMAN races, but I actually qualified in Busselton (Western Australia) last year for an actual spot in my age group, so that was epic.”
Prior to her Kona adventure, Ms Cann had qualified for the World Championships the year prior in 2022, the first time that the event was held out of Hawaii, instead hosted in St George, Utah in the USA.
Ms Cann said it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“It was a hard course, a different place to go especially as I had never really raced overseas in IronMan or triathlon before but as soon as I got the email, I showed my coach and he asked what I was going to do, and a week later, I said that I had already entered and we were going to Utah,” she said.
“As it was a steep, hard course, the training changed for me quite a bit, it was a lot of riding to Kinglake and trying to ride up my street as much as I could and a lot more than I ever had, I ended up loving riding my bike a hell of a lot more after that race and it gave me a bit more confidence to go and compete at Kona last year.”
Ms Cann has been coached by another Healesville local, Brian Curran, whom she met by coaching him in an adult swimming group she used to take at the Healesville Swim Club and who has helped her prepare for her IRONMAN events since her first in 2016.
In the 2022 St George event, Ms Cann finished 1469th with a time of 14 hours, 22 minutes and 14 seconds. In 2023, at the Kona event, she finished 974th with a time of 12 hours, 25 minutes and 45 seconds. In between the pair, she even ventured back to Utah to compete in the IRONMAN 70.3 (70.3 miles total triathlon) World Championships, finishing with a time of 6 hours 22 minutes and 37 seconds in 1370th place.
Ms Cann said we live in an amazing place for athletes to train.
“We’ve got great pools, we’ve got amazing trail running and the mountains are just at our doorstep, we’ve got great, pretty safe roads to go and ride on as well,” she said.
“The hills of Kinglake and Myers Creek Road, I think I’ve done that ride hundreds of times in my life of riding bikes, which is probably only twelve years and I’m sure there’s many more people out in the valley who ride that even more than me,”
“Since coaching kids in the swim club, I love seeing younger athletes come through and go and find their dreams and achieve their goals, it’s awesome and they should just get out there and go for it.”
Having also competed in Patagonia’s ‘Patagonman’ ultra-triathlon in Chile in December, Ms Cann now has her sights on competing in smaller events, the IRONMAN events in Cairns and Port Macquarie, going back to the Patagonman and qualifying for Kona in 2025.
