Welcome to Ginger's homepage
Ginger Howell is a professional triathlete in Framingham, MA. She started swimming in high school, and became interested in marathon running while attending Wellesley College. She was inspired by watching runners in the Boston Marathon, and decided she was going to run Boston someday.
She qualified for Boston on her third try, shortly after graduating from Wellesley. One of her friends from the swim team told her, "You're a swimmer. You're a marathoner. Biking is the easy part. You should do an Ironman!" To which she replied, "112 miles of *anything* is not easy!" However, Ginger is not one to say no to a challenge, and shortly thereafter, signed up for the 2009 Louisville Ironman.
The first order of business was to buy a bike, and sign up for a sprint tri - since she had never done a triathlon before. She then spent the next eight months training as hard as she could. Her plan was to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman in Kona. After all, it couldn't be any harder than qualifying for Boston, right? She finished in 11:32 ... not bad for a first Ironman, but well short of a KQ. In the process, she burned herself out, and pursued other projects the next several years. She went to grad school, taught classes with a circus group, and ran the Antarctica Marathon.
In 2014 she started getting the Ironman bug again - this time with a slightly better idea of what she was getting herself into! She did Kona in 2016 and 2017, and took her pro card in 2018. One of her proudest moments was winning the Boston Triathlon in 2019. Other highlights include a 5th place finish at the Great Floridian and 7th at the Waco 70.3.
2020 was a tough year - but also an illustration of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". When all of the triathlon races were cancelled, Ginger decided to try her hand at ultracycling, and completed VRAW - Virtual Race Across the West. Riding her bike for four days straight, with only a few hours sleep, is unquestionably the hardest thing she has ever done. But that experience is one of the key things that helped her push through at Ironman Florida a few months later, in spite of crashing her bike the day before the race. Hopefully 2021 will go more smoothly! She is excited to kick off the season at Challenge Miami.
When Ginger is not racing or training, she teaches swim lessons. She is sponsored by N+1 Cyclery and BlueSeventy.
She qualified for Boston on her third try, shortly after graduating from Wellesley. One of her friends from the swim team told her, "You're a swimmer. You're a marathoner. Biking is the easy part. You should do an Ironman!" To which she replied, "112 miles of *anything* is not easy!" However, Ginger is not one to say no to a challenge, and shortly thereafter, signed up for the 2009 Louisville Ironman.
The first order of business was to buy a bike, and sign up for a sprint tri - since she had never done a triathlon before. She then spent the next eight months training as hard as she could. Her plan was to qualify for the Hawaii Ironman in Kona. After all, it couldn't be any harder than qualifying for Boston, right? She finished in 11:32 ... not bad for a first Ironman, but well short of a KQ. In the process, she burned herself out, and pursued other projects the next several years. She went to grad school, taught classes with a circus group, and ran the Antarctica Marathon.
In 2014 she started getting the Ironman bug again - this time with a slightly better idea of what she was getting herself into! She did Kona in 2016 and 2017, and took her pro card in 2018. One of her proudest moments was winning the Boston Triathlon in 2019. Other highlights include a 5th place finish at the Great Floridian and 7th at the Waco 70.3.
2020 was a tough year - but also an illustration of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". When all of the triathlon races were cancelled, Ginger decided to try her hand at ultracycling, and completed VRAW - Virtual Race Across the West. Riding her bike for four days straight, with only a few hours sleep, is unquestionably the hardest thing she has ever done. But that experience is one of the key things that helped her push through at Ironman Florida a few months later, in spite of crashing her bike the day before the race. Hopefully 2021 will go more smoothly! She is excited to kick off the season at Challenge Miami.
When Ginger is not racing or training, she teaches swim lessons. She is sponsored by N+1 Cyclery and BlueSeventy.
