Please, just let me finish Ironman once more

Heading into her 10th Ironman Canada Penticton next month, hometown athlete Andrea Gardiner will be thrilled to just finish. “It’s always a disaster, I’m always last, like dead last or just dead,” said Gardiner shaking her head and laughing at the same time. A longtime Air Canada flight attendant with a Master’s degree in English literature, she “races” in the women’s 60-64 age group. Going into the 2022 Penticton race, which she failed to complete, Gardiner was ranked a staggering 99,999th on the Ironman website. She first got the Ironman bug in 2003 after coming to Penticton on a summer vacation. “Then Steve King (longtime race announcer) said to me, ‘oh we’ll see you on the start line next year,’” Gardiner recalled. “I thought are you out of your mind Steve? Is there something wrong with the cerebral cortex? “Then I thought about it and went out and bought a bike and a wetsuit — I didn’t train — and thought I’ll start and we’ll see what happens,” she said. Remarkably, she completed the course that first time and even beat some other athletes finishing a respectable (for her) 1,857th out of 2,166 in just over 15 hours. She has raced each year in Penticton since then until 2012 when it moved to Whistler, “I refused to go there because I’m a purest. I will only race Ironman Canada in Penticton.” After a short, failed marriage she decided to move to Penticton from Calgary in 2010. “At the time I thought where am I really happy and I was always happy in Penticton and I bought a house,” said Gardiner. “I fly all over the world, but I’m just so happy in Penticton.” Gardiner actually likens Ironman to her job as a flight attendant. “I work these flights to Bangkok and they’re 17 hours and that’s my Ironman time too,” she said. “I don’t train enough but I figured I’ve worked a 1,000 flights to Bangkok, I’m tired, I’m dehydrated and I just want to sit down and have a massage, it’s exactly like a day in Ironman. When she’s not competing, Gardiner likes to volunteer at other endurance events like last weekend’s Peach Classic Triathlon. She is very easy to pick out, directing traffic wearing a bright pink nylon head dress, red flag in one hand and orange traffic cone in the other. “I love coming out and volunteering because I know when I am racing I’m so brain damaged I can’t see where I’m going so I like to point the athletes in the right direction,” said Gardiner. “It’s nice to give people a smile as well.” While she is looking forward to this summer’s Ironman with limited expectations, Gardiner is gunning for a finish, even though it could be after dark. “The thing is you will need is an optic, night-vision lens for your camera if you want to get a picture of the last place finisher.

“If I’m lucky…”

Mark Brett, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Penticton Herald