Wendi Carrington, from Newark, finishes 10th in class at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii

Wendi Carrington produced the performance of a lifetime at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.

Carrington, from Newark, finished 10th out of 79 in the women’s 60-64 age group in Kona.

She completed the 2.4-mile ocean swim, 112-mile bike leg and marathon run in 12hr29min47sec.

It was a phenomenal effort from Carrington, who was 55th after the swim, making up 35 places on the bike and another 10 on the run to break into the top 10.

She’d prepared for the heat and humidity of Hawaii, which even proved too much for some of the professionals, by training in a painting and decorating suit over the top of her winter kit.

Carrington qualified for the Worlds after finishing second in class at the Hamburg Ironman in June this year.

The Belvoir Tri athlete had an experience she will never forget.

“Hawaii was another level - it was indescribable being there with all the professional athletes,” said Carrington, who has set her sights on qualifying for the 2027 Worlds.

“To finish 10th, after coming out of the swim where I did, I felt immensely proud for doing that and actually finishing because it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

“It made other Ironmen seem easy compared to that. It was really hard but I still want to go back and do another one.

“I did start off saying this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I just want to finish.

“But the next night you go to the awards ceremony and I was five places off standing on that big stage with the pros, and I wasn’t that far off.

“In hindsight, you always think what could I have done, could I have gone harder, and the answer is I probably could have done, but I just wanted to finish.

“But instead of saying, ‘no, that’s it, I’ve done it’, I just want to go back and do it again.

“So now starts the hard road of trying to qualify again.

“You have to be ranked first or second in your age group at a qualifying Ironman race.

“It might take me another couple of years but I’m determined to keep going.

“The oldest person, who I actually met, was 80, and she finished in 16-and-a-half hours.

“I made my husband laugh because I said, ‘Oh, good, I’ve got another 20 years of doing this!’”

The aquarium-like sea was “beautifully calm” when Carrington went for a couple of practice swims after arriving in Kona.

But come race day there was a huge swell to deal with and she emerged from the water in 1:32.41.

A massive hill awaited at the start of the bike leg, with Carrington describing a “mirage of heat and 112 miles of blistering sun and heat like” as the riders made their way through lava fields.

She finished in 6:27.22 before negotiating the marathon in 4:13.08 as the sound of the finish line grew ever-closer.

“I came off the bike feeling OK,” said Carrington.

“At the stage I just wanted to finish and what I hadn’t realised until afterwards was I’d gained 35 places on the bike alone, and another 10 on the run.

“And I was so close, only 20 seconds behind the next person, but I didn’t know any of this because my watch wasn’t working, so I just kept going.

“The run is normally the hardest part of an ironman; in this case, I’d say the run was the easiest part.

“It wasn’t easy but from mile 16 the sun had set, so for the last few miles the temperature had dropped a bit.

“Two of the favourites didn’t make it to the finish, so that puts into perspective how hot it was when the professionals aren’t finishing.

“You could hear the excitement of the finish line from two or three miles away.

“I came into the village and they had a commentator on the corner who called out everybody’s name as you went past, which was amazing.

“It was, ‘Wendi Carrington, from Newark, representing Belvoir Tri Club, come on, make some noise’ and the excitement, you could just feel it, so the last mile-and-a-half, my pace went up.

“Going down that red carpet to finish was just incredible.”

Carrington would like to thank Paul Farquharson at Spectrum Wellness and Performance, Jack Levick at Newark Cycles, and Helen Roe at Pure Yoga for their support.