Keep an Eye Out for ‘The Iron Mayor’ at This Year’s Ironman

STATE COLLEGE — When Ezra Nanes is not busy with his mayoral functions, serving on different boards and spending time with his wife, Mieke, and children, he is busy running, biking and swimming to train to compete once again in this year’s Ironman 70.3 Pennsylvania Happy Valley .

“You know, that’s one of the questions I get a lot,” Nanes shared, when asked how he balances it all. “I work full time at AccuWeather. I’m the mayor of State College. Competing in an Ironman. And I like to think I’m a very engaged and loving husband and father. I am a family guy. So balancing all that can sometimes be a little stressful. I will say that I don’t have a lot of downtime.”

Nanes, who completed last year’s Ironman in 6 hours 22 minutes, has been hard at work, to set a new personal best, doing strength and conditioning training with Kara Hundley, who runs K. Hundley Fitness.

“I train six days a week. I swim, I bike, I run, generally in that order because that’s the order of a triathlon. There are days where I do doubles, where I’ll swim and I’ll bike, or where I’ll bike and then I run,” he said, sharing how that morning he was up at 4:30 to have time to swim before getting home to help Mieke get their children ready for the day.

Nanes generally gives himself six months to train to compete in a triathlon, noting how that schedule gives him a chance to properly plan his training schedule and scale up his training sessions.

“You don’t want to rush the scaling up of your training volumes. Right now, I’m just crossing over the peak of the training volume — two weeks ago, my long ride on Saturday was four and a half hours. It was almost 60 miles. And then after that, right away I ran,” Nanes said.

“These are very long. These are four and a half, five hour training blocks, and you don’t want to go from ‘I haven’t been training’ to ‘I’m doing four and a half hours’ because you’ll get injured. So the key to doing an Ironman is building up your volume and your ability to handle the work without getting injured. If you can accomplish that, you’re going to have a good day out there.”

And while Nanes could easily take all the credit for his athletic endeavors, he was quick to note that his time spent training and competing would not be possible without the support of his wife, noting how not only does she support him by giving him the time to train independently, but she also coordinates schedules to train alongside him.

“I am competing with the good graces of my wife. You know, Mieke and I are partners in everything, and I never make the assumption because it is a time commitment. … Mieke is also a competitive athlete,” he said. “So we try to combine training so that we don’t not see each other. When you’re training for one of these things, if you can go out with your spouse and do a ride or a run, it really reduces the time when you’re apart. Anyways, you just fit it in. … Those Saturdays, Sundays when you really have those big volume trainings, those are family time days. And Mieke and the kids have been amazing. … We balance it out together.”

Though Nanes has his own personal goals and reasons behind competing — “I’m hoping to get a personal record. I want to beat my time from last year. I think it’s possible. I’m certainly going to go for it. I want to have a great day out there.” — he also noted how the impact of the competition stretches beyond the individual competitors.

“Ironman, it’s a flagship global event. So it’s a great brand for us to have coming to our area because it can attract other major global events. They could be sporting. They could be entertainment. They could be music. They could be cultural. It just adds to the awareness of this area,” Nanes said. “And when you have those events coming in, it’s great for commerce. It’s great for stores and restaurants and hotels and all of our tourism-oriented businesses. … Having the race here is really important for this area.”

Last year’s event had an economic impact of $4.4 million for Centre County, according to the Happy Valley Sports and Entertainment Alliance, which Nanes noted was only possible due to the wide range of people who contributed to the event’s success.

“From the race director, Josh Cone, to Fritz at Happy Valley Adventure Bureau and his team, all the people at Penn State, all that support, all the volunteer organizations in the borough, all across Centre County, the commissioners, the EMS, fire, police it takes and all the thousands of volunteers, it takes so many people. And then all the families supporting all the athletes,” Nanes said.

“It just takes so many people to really pull it off. So it’s really a communal event, and I’m so grateful for everybody’s role in it. I’m really excited to be a part of it. Really proud of this event, and I can’t wait until the race. If anybody’s reading and hasn’t thought about attending, I hope they’ll consider stopping by.”

The post Keep an Eye Out for ‘The Iron Mayor’ at This Year’s Ironman appeared first on StateCollege.com .