Action County: Michelle Lyman

BRECKENRIDGE — When 66-year-old Jim Syracuse, a dedicated runner and longtime friend, died in 2006, local Michelle Lyman was devastated.

“He didn’t wake up one morning and it just shattered all of us,” Lyman said. “It came out of nowhere.”

So, Lyman has dedicated her summer to honor his memory.

The 35-year-old Breckenridge athlete will travel to Clermont, Fla. to race in the Great Floridian Ironman, Florida’s original ultra-distance triathlon, on Oct. 25.

Her participation is in tribute to her running mentor, Syracuse, who passed away at his home in Connecticut less than a month after completing his 29th consecutive Boston Marathon at 66 years old. Syracuse, the father of Lyman’s childhood friend,

completed 105 marathons in his life time.

“He was an incredible athlete,” Lyman said. “... It just blows me away. I can’t imagine running that much anyway."

According to Lyman, the family requested that in place of flowers or money at the funeral, friends should honor his life simply by running. And Lyman took that message to heart.

An avid adventure racer and snowshoe runner, Lyman spent the summer training for the ironman in Clermont to remember a man who always followed and supported her drive to compete.

“I decided that I would pick a race,” Lyman said of her desire to honor Syracuse with the Great Floridian. “I do adventure races normally and hadn’t been back to triathlons in years.”

It’s been six years since her last and only Ironman competition, the Great Floridian Marathon in 2002. So to ease back into it, she did a sprint triathlon, the Denver Tri for a Cure, in August and also recruited a running coach — Darren Brungardt, assistant cross country coach at Summit High School — to hone her foot-racing skills.

Lyman’s previous Great Floridian Ironman time was 16 hours, 15 minutes, 13 seconds.

“I’ve told everyone that my goal is to beat that time by two hours, which is huge,” she said.

A full triathlon is 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and 26.2 miles on foot. To reach her goal, she trains on average 20-25 hours per week.

“It’s been pretty constant though for the past two months,” Lyman added, laughing.

“Darren and I have been running two to three times a week and I’ve been running six days a week. I don’t doubt that if there is a spiritual world, Jim is looking down on me right now and watching me suffer.”

Originally from Chicago, Lyman moved out to Summit County in 2002 to get serious about training for her favored athletic endeavors — snowshoe and adventure racing.



“It was a better place to train in the altitude,” she said of her transplant to the mountains.

But, this year Lyman has been solely focused on training for the Ironman. And running is her biggest challenge. So she did five half-marathons as preparation.

“Mrs. Syracuse offered to give me a memento to carry with me (at the Floridian),” she said. “She said she would give me Jim’s chip that he ran with in every Boston Marathon. I picked this race because it was a hard race for me to do the first time. ... It comes from the heart for me because this is the one person who’s followed me even into my adult life. He had followed me racing far more than my parents, anyone in my family, because he was a runner too. I just can’t believe that someone in such good health could die.”

For more information on the Great Floridian Ironman, visit www.greatfloridian.com.

Caitlin Row can be reached at crow@summitdaily.com.