A year ago former Eph cross country and track standout Amy (Zindell) Bevilacqua finished third in the NYC Triathlon, but this year she used a strong effort in the bike portion of the event (swim (1.5 K), bike (40K) & run (10K) ) to propel her to a 20-second victory, finishing in 2:00.04.
Bevilacqua finished 25th overall among the 3,500 participants and topped the field of 1,130 women.
The NYC Marathon bills itself as "the most in-demand triathlon in the world."
Bevilacqua has been competing as a professional in the triathlon since 2010.
Bevilacqua and her husband Raffele '94 reside in Wilton, Conn., with their daughter and three sons.
Amy (Zindell) Bevilacqua in her own words:
"If "self-employed" means stay-at-home-mom, then I guess that's right -- although I did finally win a good paycheck at the race this past weekend!
"Training for an Olympic-distance triathlon doesn't require a massive amount of time. A couple of hours a day is all I do, but hard days are hard -- intensity at race-effort and pace is very important, so it's more quality vs. quantity for me. My local YMCA has babysitting for up to an hour and a half on the days that the little ones don't have preschool, so I get my main session in then. Otherwise, I have a bike trainer and a treadmill in the garage and squeeze workouts in while the kids rest or play Wii (hopefully it won't turn their budding Eph-brains into mush!!!)."
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| Amy Bevilacqua with her 4 children |
"My plantar faciitis was bad about two years ago. I spent a fortune on therapy and then one day I put a folded-up Dobie kitchen sponge in my shoe under my arch and (knock-on-wood) haven't had a problem since. I do still do my stretches every morning, though, because it is a nasty little injury that I never want again!"
"I began the triathlon about 11 years ago. No, it wasn't on my radar screen until somebody suggested I try one because I "look like a swimmer." Unfortunately, I may have the upper body of a swimmer but I haven't figured out how to use it to swim fast yet."
"I ran very recreationally after Williams. I was living in New York City, working full time in an office, and then I ran away to Club Med for a while to teach flying trapeze, ended up in a small travelling circus in Japan after that, and then came back home in 2000 -- hoping to settle down and have babies. That whole time I ran to stay relatively fit but not competitively."
"I train indoors most of the time. I use the Wilton (CT) YMCA. They have a nice 50m pool and some solid treadmills that don't start to shake when you go past 10mph. On weekends, when the weather is nice and my husband is home, I try to get outside and take advantage of the many hills we have in town."
"Gosh, running in high school and at Williams taught me so much it's hard to answer this one. Aside from the technical aspects of interval, tempo and long-distance training, I think running at Williams, in particular, instilled a pure love of the sport and an appreciation of the beauty of it. I still talk to people about those long Sunday morning runs up in the mountains -- I mean, you just can't beat that!"
"Along those same lines, I remember the seasons of running at Williams -- the colors in fall in Hopkins Forest and Mt. Hope Farm; the long, frigid snowy winter runs up in Pownal, Vermont, where Pete Farwell would drop us in the van and we'd run until we found it again; and then springtime on the track and the golf course. I was not a star of the team, and I never ended up at a national competition or on the podium in college but I really enjoyed the opportunity to run on a few of the 4x800m relay teams in some big meets, as well as be one of the first women to run the steeplechase."
I just signed up for the Green Mountain Stage Race, which is a four-day bike race near Sugarbush, Vermont on Labor Day weekend. That will be my first stage race and I'm really looking forward to it. Cycling is probably my biggest strength out of the three events so I also want to see where that will take me over the next few years."
"Swimming is a real struggle for me, so if I continue to compete as a pro triathlete I should probably move up in distance to the half-ironman, where the swim is less of a factor because the bike and run legs of the race are so much longer in relation to the swim. I have the Pocono 70.3 on my radar screen for the end of September, so hopefully I will be there if I can work up the gut to toe that line!"
Official Results ** NY Times ** Bloomberg ** NorthJersey.com ** Connecticut Post
