Ascending through the mountain villages of Nice, France, Emma Taylor felt the fatigue in her legs setting in with each pedal of her bicycle through 8,500 feet of elevation gain.
But the 31-year-old Brookline resident entered the VinFast IRONMAN World Championship with a strong finish in mind. So Taylor, a physical therapist by day who is used to pushing her clients, dug in for her own mental push, gutting through the ride and finishing the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run in under 12.5 hours last Sunday.
“I thought back to all of the time I spent building up to this moment … and was really just trying to piece up the race,” Taylor said. “Really playing the segmental mind game.”
Taylor, a member of the Boston Triathlon Team and head coach of MIT’s triathlon club program, is the owner and founder of Sisu Boston Physical Therapy, a local clinic offering in-home and virtual sessions. The New Jersey native has lived in Brookline for five years, and was a soccer and track athlete at Brandeis University.
Her path to the world championship started during physical therapy school at Northeastern University. An avid runner and biker at the time, Taylor tried a swimming class at her local gym on a whim. A classmate told Taylor about IRONMANs, and when a 2017 family trip to Austria overlapped with a half IRONMAN nearby, Taylor went all-in on training for her first event in Zell am Zee.
“It was a big goal, but on a whim,” Taylor said. “I just fell in love with it.”
In the years since, Taylor has completed 10 more half IRONMANs, her first full IRONMAN in Switzerland in 2021, last weekend’s world championship, and will head to the half IRONMAN World Championship in Taupo, New Zealand in December.
Taylor trained diligently through the winter, swimming three-times weekly at Brookline High School with the Brookline Dolphins Master’s Team, biking five-times weekly indoors and running four times per week — always outdoors — totaling 15 hours per week. She qualified for the world championship with a fifth-place finish in the 30-34 age group at the IRONMAN 70.3 Eagleman in Cambridge, Maryland in June, her third podium finish at a half-IRONMAN event.
“It was obviously super exciting because it was the culmination of all my training, and qualifying in general is such a prestigious thing that many people don’t achieve,” Taylor said.
Ahead of the world championship, a bout with Covid-19 impacted her pre-race training. Instead of an 18-20-mile-long training run, Taylor was only able to get to 13 miles. A full practice bike ride was essentially cut in half. Had Taylor not gotten sick, she thinks she had a chance at the top-10 in her age group , but given the circumstances, adjusted her goals to finishing and enjoying the experience.
And that she did. Taylor traveled to Nice with her boyfriend, Sage Hiller, and mother, Rachel Taylor. She mingled with professional athletes and enjoyed sampling the area’s cuisine and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.
Despite the challenging bike course, Taylor described it as “stunning.” She enjoyed taking part in the all-women’s race, soaking up and contributing to a supportive energy where most competitors cheered each other on.
“It was just really special,” Taylor said.