“I thought about the hardest possible thing I could do. I considered climbing Mount Kilimanjaro… but I already bought a bike… so I went with Ironman.”
Now carrying the unofficial—yet widely rumoured—title of having the fastest female time for a Trinidadian woman competing in an Ironman triathlon, Sjaelan Evans reflects on her journey to the finish line, which began almost on a whim. The ultimate race that tests not only fitness but grit and resolve, Ironman is one of the world’s toughest endurance events: a 3.8km swim, a 180km bike ride, and a full 42.2km marathon.
Following the passing of her close friend, Korey Gill, in September 2024, Evans decided to compete in his honour. She recalls that while Gill was alive, she had fallen into a training rut, and he never stopped encouraging her to challenge herself and return to fitness. After his passing, those words echoed louder than ever, ultimately guiding her toward Ironman.
Although competing in Ironman was a new challenge, Evans has an impressive background in marathon running, having completed 22 official marathons. Her running journey began in 2008 when, “after going from two miles at a time in my life to a marathon in four months,” she signed up for a race in Texas with her father and sister.
“I fell in love with long distance after that marathon,” she remembers. “They say people with trauma gravitate to long distance, and I have that and an addictive personality, so distance helped me focus my energy on running, with the reward being endorphins and dopamine.”
After years of marathon running, however, she slipped into a deep rut during the COVID period. It wasn’t until 2024—driven by grief—that she finally pulled herself out and set her sights on her next challenge.
Driven by an ironclad will to honour her friend, Evans took her first decisive step in November 2024 and bought a bicycle. She reached out to the fewer than ten Trinidad and Tobago athletes who had previously completed an Ironman, and feeling sufficiently informed, she signed up for the 2025 race in Tempe, Arizona. The course is known for its chilly, murky water in Lake Tempe, its dry desert air, and strong winds on the bike leg—factors Evans did not initially know but would confront during preparation and on race day.
She began training in earnest after Carnival, with her schedule intensifying four months before the race. “In those four months, I stopped liming and drinking, was in bed at 8 pm every night to wake up for my 5 am swim, and would do two-a-days, every day.” Evans went from having cycled seriously only five times—ten years prior—and swimming just as rarely, to integrating both intensely into her routine.
As part of her preparation, she scoured online forums for insight. After reading about the lake’s frigid waters—so cold that swimmers have been pulled out with hypothermia—she hired a swim coach just two months before the race. Running, however, remained her comfort zone, and she quickly fell back into long-distance training as race day approached.
Evans arrived in Arizona five days before the race, thankful she had given herself time to acclimate to the dry desert air and higher altitude. “I went for a run the week of, and realised my heart rate was high and my breathing shallow,” she said. “The climate was definitely hard to adapt to.”
When her friends and family arrived the Friday before the race, her nerves eased. The day before, she and fellow Trinidadian competitor Michael Hadad headed to Lake Tempe for a practice swim. A taxi driver had already warned her about the lake’s reputation—“disgusting… and they’ve pulled dead bodies from it”—adding that locals aren’t even allowed to swim there.
Just before 7.30 a.m. on Sunday, November 16, Evans dove into her first Ironman, plunging into the chilly waters of Lake Tempe. “I was so happy that it was finally happening and that I was truly living the moment,” she recalls.
She completed the 3.8km swim in one hour and 18 minutes, battling water hovering around 60°F. “My legs started cramping so badly from the cold that I had to stop using them and swim only with my arms,” she says. “Something I hadn’t practiced, but it was the only way to make it through.”
Still freezing when she mounted her bike, her pace was far slower than she had trained for. It wasn’t until about 90km into the ride that she finally warmed up. Having misplaced her cycling glasses, she rode with compromised vision, tears streaming from her eyes as strong winds whipped her.
Disaster struck at mile 1.92: distracted by her bike computer, Evans fell. As racers dodged her, she lay for a few seconds to regain her bearings. When she sprang up, a cyclist rode straight into her and they both tumbled.
Nursing injuries from the collision, she apologised to the rider and set off on the marathon—her strongest event. “I had to run a whole marathon after he ran into me,” she laughs. “But I felt good. I was happy to be in my element. I smiled the whole time.”
She ran past hundreds—fallen runners nursing cramps, walkers shuffling, and exhausted competitors moving like “zombies”—and kept pacing toward the finish line. Her family ran beside her, playing soca from a speaker; her friend screamed encouragement from the sidelines.
As she approached the final mile, she noticed the other competitors, their faces alight with euphoria, practising their finish-line poses. Evans kept running. When she crossed the finish line, a friend handed her the T&T flag, and she draped it over her shoulders, overwhelmed with emotion.
“Hell yea, I’ll do it again,” she fires back when asked if she would take on another Ironman. “And I’ll try to beat my time.” With an overall finish of 12 hours and 28 minutes, she has been unofficially recognised as the fastest Trinidadian female to complete an Ironman race.
Reflecting on her journey, she admits it was anything but smooth—months of intense preparation layered over heartbreak from a recent breakup and the weight of “going through tabanca.” But Evans transformed pain and grief into fuel, emerging victorious at Ironman Arizona as what she describes as the “best version of myself yet.”
