For most people—regardless of age—so much as attempting a triathlon is a daunting prospect, let alone actually completing one. Even more impressive would be finishing fast enough to officially rank. But that’s exactly what 80-year-old Natalie Grabow did at the 2025 Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, earlier this month.
On October 11, Grabow, an avid triathlete who took up the demanding athletic discipline at 59, became the oldest woman to ever complete an Ironman World Championship, breaking the previous record set by then-78-year-old Cherie Gruenfeld in 2022. She chugged across the finish line 16 hours, 45 minutes, and 26 seconds after starting—around 15 minutes shy of the 17-hour cutoff time.
To ask Grabow how she pulled off this historic achievement, SELF caught up with her over Zoom 11 days after Kona. “I think as you get older, it's important to feel strong in your body, and then you feel strong in your head,” she tells SELF. “When you challenge yourself to do some hard things, it's just a great feeling…. Even if you don't do as well as the next person, you did as well as you could do, and you can't ask more of yourself than to give everything you've got.”
Read on to learn how Grabow discovered a passion for triathlons later in life, what her training schedule looks like, and how she hopes her success inspires others to push their limits.
“I've always been competitive and I've always enjoyed sports,” Grabow says, a bouquet of balloons emblazoned with celebratory messages (“You’re Number #1!”) bobbing in the background of her computer screen. During her early years in the 1940s and ’50s, however, she didn’t really have much of an outlet for that energy: Back then, sports teams for women and girls weren’t an option in school. “We had cheerleading to do, but that was about it,” she says. “We didn't have sports like the boys had.”
Later in life, when she temporarily left the workforce to start a family, Grabow found more opportunities to explore her interest in fitness. She played tennis when her two daughters were young and turned to running shortly before she went back to work in her early forties. Eventually, she progressed from short jogs during her lunch breaks into 5Ks and 10Ks locally. Encouraged by her runner friends, she entered a sprint triathlon, an entry-level race that consists of a half-mile swim, a 12.4-mile bike ride, and a 3.1-mile run: “They kept saying, ‘Come on, Natalie, there's a sprint right in the next town. Come and do it,’” she says.
There was just one (big) problem: Grabow had never learned to swim. She came up with a workaround—one of her daughters subbed in for her during the swimming portion of the event—but knew what she’d have to do if she wanted to continue competing: learn how to swim for real. So at 59, she became a regular at her local YMCA pool. “That was scary. I was very, very awkward and slow and could barely get from one end of the pool to the other in the beginning,” she says. “But I was pretty determined. I wasn't afraid of it. I just didn't know how to do it.” Slowly but surely she improved, though the discomfort never totally left. Swimming “didn't come naturally to me, it's still not my favorite part, and I'm not that great at it, but I can get through it,” she says.
Just nine months after her first self-directed swimming lesson, in the spring of 2005, Grabow completed her first full triathlon: the New Jersey Devilman, another sprint. From there, “I was just hooked,” she says. Before long, she progressed to a half-Ironman (also known as a 70.3), and, finally, an actual Ironman, which involves a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run in one fell swoop. Twenty years and 93 triathlons (including 16 Ironmans) have passed since Grabow’s triathlon journey began, but she’s still going strong—a sense of drive that stems in part from her early experience of exclusion. “I don't feel like I'll ever get tired or burn out of the sport because I didn't have a chance to start early,” she says.
To train for Kona, which marked her 11th appearance at the Ironman World Championship, Grabow followed a punishing fitness regimen. Earlier in the race season, she had done three 70.3s, so she was already in solid shape, but she had to take her workouts to the next level to prepare for the heightened demand on her body. There wasn’t much margin for error: If she didn’t cross the finish line by the 17-hour mark, she’d be disqualified from the race and forfeit her bid for the oldest woman finisher title. One other woman in the 80-84 age group had previously tried and failed, so “I knew that was going to be a big challenge,” she says.
During training, every day followed the same routine. A self-described “very early-to-bed, early-to-rise person” who’s “nearly always asleep by nine o’clock [p.m.],” Grabow rose between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m. Breakfast came first, a nonnegotiable. “I just have to eat,” she says. “You have to pay attention to what your body demands and what feels good for you.”
Then, it was straight into stretching and mobility work—“anything to loosen tight areas up,” from foam-rolling to core exercises, Grabow says. Stretching is particularly important in her mind. “When I was younger, I might just go out for a run and not think about that,” she says. “But I think as you age, you have to really take care of your body in that way, [so] if something's tight, make sure you get that nice and loose before you go for a run.” Drilling her glutes is also a priority for her. “You use your glutes so much in sports,” she says, so to keep those all-important muscles in peak condition, she made sure to incorporate targeted moves like hip thrusts.
After stretching, it was time for her primary workouts: runs, swims, and bike rides. Generally, Grabow aimed for two per day, mixing and matching modalities. Her coach, Michelle Lake of Fiv3 Racing, would in turn keep track of her distances—“the total number of miles I was running and the time on the bike and the yardage for the swim”—so Grabow could escalate slowly but surely, building the strength and endurance necessary for Kona.
In keeping with her philosophy that “food is very important,” Grabow ate consistently throughout the day to make sure she had enough fuel to perform her best, from small meals at home to energy gels on long runs or bike rides. “I eat about five times a day, every three to four hours, and I just eat what I feel like my body needs at that time, whether it's protein or carbs or whatever,” she says. “I'm not a fussy eater and I don't have a particular diet that I follow, so I include sweets and chocolate and all sorts of things.”
