AndIn reality, Uwe Schinz is hard to shake. But now the 70-year-old is sitting in the sun of Kailua-Kona, being calm himself, and then he reports, “I have received so many beautiful messages in the last few days. So many people who are happy for me and wish me good luck. I wouldn’t be. never waited. ” His eyes fill with tears. “I was so happy.” He, who is rarely speechless, says nothing and squints. But the tears remain. “I’m ready for my greatest adventure.” The Ironman Hawaii.
Review: WELT visited the pensioner at home in Heist three weeks ago. A red racing bike hangs on the wall like an old time relic. “I used it,” he says, stroking his shapely gray mustache, “I drove the Ironman Hamburg.” The bike is 17, no frills. No triathlon handlebars, nothing. He looked like a dinosaur in Hamburg among all the high-tech machines.
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The bike fits the Schleswig-Holsteiner: durable, indestructible, unique and idiosyncratic in the best sense of the word. She didn’t start walking until she was 40. In 2018 he survived a cancer operation and then suffered a pulmonary embolism. Now the grandfather – he has a five-year-old granddaughter – has been in Hawaii for a week with his wife and is making his debut at the legendary Ironman World Championship. With 70 years.
Uwe Schinz indicates his name. All the appetizers are immortalized on this wall in Kailua-Kona
Source: Uwe Schinz
This Thursday we start at 7:25 pm after the professionals (6:25 pm) in the field of age group athletes over 3.8 km of swimming, 180 km of cycling and 42.195 km of running (male professionals and other groups of age begin on October 8). He left his red racing bike at home, Schinz bought a modern and used triathlon bike.
It started with a herniated disc
But the test drive on the racing track was not optimal, to put it mildly. The infamous wind blew fiercely and made life difficult for him. “And the sun burned relentlessly. Also, the radiation from the black lava fields, “he says.” I was on the ground. And that was only half the distance. ” But he recovered. “Anyone can do it easily.”
The big day can come: Uwe Schinz is ready
Source: Frank Wechsel / spomedis
Schinz no longer wants to be without sports. For him it is simply a part of life. “I need sports to let off steam, I have too many bumblebees up my sleeve and I like to push myself to the limit,” he says. “It turns me on. And I want to maintain this level of fitness.”
It started with two slipped discs. Schinz was 49 years old and had to undergo surgery. He decided not to, went to rehab and met a young man who took him on the run. “Six and a half kilometers, after which I was dead,” he recalls.
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But it continued. “I felt like I had no back pain for two or three hours later.” The doctor sent him running to school to learn how to walk healthily. On the last day of rehabilitation, Uwe ran 13 kilometers. And within a year his first marathon. “It’s never too late to start exercising,” he says.
And then he crossed the Sahara
Schinz kept running. To continue. “It was good for me,” he explains. “And it was a stress reliever for my field work.” 250 km “Marathon des Sables” in the Sahara, 275 km Grand-To-Grand-Ultra in the Grand Canyon, 100 km running in Biel (Switzerland) and the one around the other great bike ride. Just to cite examples. He also does it for others and is involved in “Appen musiziert”, an initiative that helps seriously ill children. This is important to him.
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100 kilometers of hiking in one go
After two small triathlons, Schinz ventured into the long distance in 2017. Why? “I’m a little crazy and see what else it could be?” he says. The cell phone ringtone accompanies it: “Born to be wild” by Steppenwolf. The long distance, the atmosphere there, the people: he liked him.
“Suddenly a wreck. There I fought.”
But his quest for adventure was abruptly stopped in 2018. prostate cancer. The problem came after the operation. “Tomorrow morning I was supposed to go to the sink arm in arm with the nurse. I have not succeeded. It has become pitch dark ”. Pulmonary embolism. Before the operation he had covered 50 miles in five days because he wanted to be in top form during the procedure. After that the world was different. “I walked with my wife to the city sign, 150 meters back and forth, and I was exhausted. That was all I could do.”
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100 kilometers of hiking in one go
Physical was one thing, mentally it was more difficult. “Suddenly a wreck. There I fought.” The fitness he had built earlier helped him. But Schinz still needed a goal in mind. “That was the Brockenlauf,” he says. “No,” he has to think for a moment. “I have small memory gaps since 2018. “Remember right away: the Harz crossing with more than 50 kilometers.
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He doesn’t mind having to think about dates, places and other things from time to time. Schinz is happy where he is. He has cleaned up his life from him, separated from a few people who, as he says, “don’t suit him. I don’t want to argue anymore and try to see only the positive, “he says.” Now I enjoy more every day because I know it can be over in a second. And I don’t stay anymore. “
Allergy to blue-green algae and falling of the wheel before departure
Before daring to start Ironman Hamburg in 2021, he underwent a sports medicine checkup. “All values excellent. Biological age 55,” he cheers. But he hadn’t really prepared for the competition. Carbohydrate intake and food strategy? None. Swim? “I swam my son’s crawl style, sometimes to frog in the middle, then I got cramps and had to crawl again, “he says.
He finally finished after 14:49 hours and unexpectedly secured the starting place for Hawaii. Then he took swimming lessons.
Schinz in Hawaii: an unexpected dream
Source: Uwe Schinz
He has been training hard for the big day since the beginning of the year. “I find his will so impressive! I have to keep slowing it down, “says coach Katja Ritzmann. Since then she has swam 80km in the lake, more or less the same in the hall, has cycled 3,500km outdoors since March and run 770km.
He also sought a job to finance the Hawaii adventure. “My pension is good and sufficient for normal vacation life,” she says. But Hawaii is expensive. The entry fee alone costs $ 1,120, plus hotel costs have exploded.
And then, two or three weeks before leaving Hawaii, something went wrong: blue-green algae poisoning after swimming in the lake, followed by breathing problems and sleepless nights. Wheel accident after a collision with a car on the last long test drive at home. Not beautiful.
But nothing that can stop Uwe Schinz.
Return after the fall drama – “I’ve never felt as good as this time”
After his dramatic fall at the Ironman World Championships in Utah, Andreas Dreitz had to worry about his career. The triathlon pro is even happier to be able to take part in the Ironman in Hawaii again.
/data/photo/2022/09/07/6318899664298.jpg "Side effects of methylprednisolone, from common to severe")
