Welcome to Ginger's homepage
Ginger Howell is a professional triathlete and swim instructor in Boston, 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.
However, the idea of going to Kona still sat patiently in the back of her mind, and in 2014, she started getting the Ironman bug again. It took several tries, but she finally qualified - at Ironman Texas, the year of the hail storm. She did Kona in 2016 & 2017, and then earned her pro card in the summer of 2018.
2019 was her first full year of racing as a pro. Moving from the front of your age group to the back of the pro field is a tough transition, but she is working her way up. Her proudest moment in 2019 was winning the Boston Triathlon - a race in which she has traditionally placed 4th.
When she is not at a race, she teaches at Charles River Aquatics, and does triathlon coaching and motivational speaking. She is sponsored by N+1 Cyclery, Bianchi, BlueSeventy, and HoneyStinger.
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.
However, the idea of going to Kona still sat patiently in the back of her mind, and in 2014, she started getting the Ironman bug again. It took several tries, but she finally qualified - at Ironman Texas, the year of the hail storm. She did Kona in 2016 & 2017, and then earned her pro card in the summer of 2018.
2019 was her first full year of racing as a pro. Moving from the front of your age group to the back of the pro field is a tough transition, but she is working her way up. Her proudest moment in 2019 was winning the Boston Triathlon - a race in which she has traditionally placed 4th.
When she is not at a race, she teaches at Charles River Aquatics, and does triathlon coaching and motivational speaking. She is sponsored by N+1 Cyclery, Bianchi, BlueSeventy, and HoneyStinger.
