From Volunteering to the World Champs - Claire Williams

Welcome to our latest Agegroup Guest Claire Williams, Claire says

"I used to swim as a child and continued to do so up until I went to university. At university, swimming and all sports in general went out the window and was replaced with drinking, socialising and general craziness!! With all that came a lot of weight gain. Fast forward a few years and I met my then husband to be and wanted to lose weight for our wedding.  My friend suggested a Chester tri swim session of which I dragged myself to and thoroughly enjoyed. This led to volunteering for the Tri clubs local events. While doing volunteering i saw how much variety in ability there was and for me personally at that time, the various body shapes of the people competing which actually inspired me to give it a go! My first triathlon was in 2013 at Nantwich (UK Triathlon) and i was completely hooked!!! I bought a new (heavy) second hand bike and cheap wetsuit and my next race was booked! From there i've been lucky that we have the fantastic Deva triathlon and Deva divas triathlon on our doorstep, run by our wonderful Chester tri club, so have competed at those multiple times. Where is started to get really interesting is when someone suggested that i could qualify for the age group GB team. i never thought in a millon years that this would be possible or that i stood a chance, but I give it a go to my surprise I qualified for Rotterdam (sprint). After that incredible experience, I was even more inspired to try again and since then have competed at both sprint and standard distances on the Gold Coast, Glasgow and Lausanne. After the Gold Coast, I decided to enter my first competitive 70.3 in Majorca. Having no expectations I went into this a little bit blind and naive. However after the most incredible race I managed to finish in 5.03 And literally handful of seconds behind third place. This lit the fire With regards to 70.3 racing and I felt as though I had a score to settle in Majorca so we headed back after Covid in October 21. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite manage to beat that five hour mark and at the time I was extremely upset but couldn’t figure out Why I was so emotional about it. Fast forward another week and I found out I was actually seven weeks pregnant when I did that race and that was probably why I was feeling so emotional!! And that’s when my life, with regards to triathlon has completely changed. Having a child gives you new perspective and priorities in life and our daughter is always going to be the priority, She is our complete world. That said triathlon is still who we are and what we do and me and my partner continue to train and race as much as we can. Since Having my daughter, I was determined to get back to the routine and structure so entered my first race back which was a local sprint triathlon in which I won my age group which is a nice bonus. This gave me the confidence to push on so with unfinished business at 70.3 I entered Weymouth and Swansea with the intention to qualify for the 70.3 world championships. Luckily, I got that qualification early at Swansea which took the pressure off Weymouth. So that brings us to the present day after competing at the ironman 70.3 world champs in Marbella, which was an insane experience. Unfortunately, due to A mechanical this race didn’t go quite to plan so in terms of performance it was my worst 70.3 that I have ever done but in terms of enjoyment of the race and atmosphere, nothing will come close. `'

you can find Clare on social media @

Instagram- @triathloncoachclaire

Facebook - Clairewilliams

websites - https://optimumhealthcoaching.com/

                   https://adaptedlife.co.uk/triathlon-team/

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