Three-time Ironman World Championship runner-up Lucy Charles-Barclay is taking aim at the iron distance world record, signing on to the Sub-8 Project. An age group athlete just five years ago, the tenacious Brit currently owns the sixth-fastest ever time over the iron distance, and she wants more. In fact, she wants to make history and redefine the upper limits of human potential, and the Pho3nix-backed Sub-8 project is the perfect platform.
Charles-Barclay has had a meteoric ascent in triathlon. After a 10-year competitive swimming career that culminated in narrowly missing out on Team GB selection for the 2012 London Olympics open water category, she switched to triathlon and dived straight into the toughest endurance format there is: the iron distance.
As an age-group athlete, Charles-Barclay won both the 2015 Ironman 70.3 World Championship and Ironman World Championship, prompting her to seek her professional license. It only took 38 months for Charles-Barclay to go from her first race to finishing second at the 2017 Ironman World Championship in her first year as a full-time pro. In Kona, Hawai’i, the home of the world championships, she obliterated the swim course record that had stood for 19 years, recorded the second-fastest ever bike split and overall course time, and has never finished lower than second. All that before the age of 26 — and she’s still getting faster.
“I love the long distance format and seeing where the limits are of what is possible and what the human body is capable of. I have never had a ceiling which I aim towards as I feel there are always ways to improve, drive forward and deliver more. This project is taking that to the very extreme which is why I am so excited to be a part of it and believe this will be the journey of a lifetime.”
