Rebirth At The 2026 Ironman 70.3 San Salvador
Racing an early season triathlon in El Salvador, a country afresh with community and newfound stability
An Ironman 70.3 in El Salvador?
Ten years ago that would have sounded like satire.
Ten years ago, this was not a place that closed streets for triathletes. It closed streets for crossfire. For crime scenes. For cortejo fúnebres, slow and somber, widows clutching their crosses.
El Salvador was the murder capital of the world, overrun by brutal gangs and guerillas in a ceaseless civil war. Thirty, sometimes sixty people murdered every day. Bus drivers extorted. Pasajeros raped, discarded. Mothers waiting outside morgues. Neighborhoods divided by invisible borders you crossed at your own risk.
People didn’t train here in aero helmets.
They survived.
The idea that athletes would gather here not out of necessity but by choice, lining up to suffer on purpose, would have seemed absurd. This was a country where suffering had never been optional.
And yet this weekend, they’ve shut down the main highways and roped off city center for exactly that. Police motorcycles escort cyclists instead of chasing suspects. Families line the barricades with umbrellas and coconut water, dancing and cheering their friends and family. Music plays where sirens once dominated the soundtrack.
The same asphalt.
The same sun.
A completely different country.
It’s the scale of that shift, from fear as infrastructure to sport as celebration, that pulled me here for the inaugural Ironman 70.3 San Salvador. I needed to see how a place can rewrite itself that completely. Whether you can pour something as fragile and hopeful as an Ironman into streets once filled with so much terror and grief.
The Race
The swim start was quiet in a way that surprised me. A precipitous calm after a frantic day of hustling bikes and gear up and down the narrow, diesel-smoked highways. The previous night had offered no refuge, flopping fitfully as my skin relearned the language of heat. But perhaps this is daily Salvadoran life encapsulated - a mobius strip of paradisal tranquility and compulsary grit.
I sat on the shore, sipping coffee that smelled of brown sugar and oranges. The lake lay still beneath a volcano, its cone rising like a watchtower above the water. As the brass band played the national anthem, the sun broke over the ridge and spilled itself across this wild and bountiful land. The lake caught the first rays and shattered it into gold. For a moment the whole place glittered.
One minute to start.
The words echoed over the loudspeakers, and rolled across the lake. The frenzy of the crowd bubbled down to a murmur, each athlete retreating into their new reality, focused on the challenge ahead. We exchange eye contact and nods, a flicker of fear wrapped in resolve.
I felt something heavier than nerves. Gratitude. Not the Instagram kind. The private kind. The kind that lands in your chest when you realize your body still answers when you ask something hard of it. I was healthy. I was here. I could choose this suffering.
The firecrackers blasted into the sky, and ~850 athletes churned the gold back into blue.
Ten years ago, a loud crack-crack-crack would signal something far more deadly. That thought lingered as we floated between the buoys, brushing against each other, streaming through the warm water in patient silence. I was going slower than usual, with foot cramps to remind me that my heat acclimation was far from ready. That’s alright. This moment felt important. Historic.
Out of the water, onto the bike. The first twenty minutes were a grind up a never-ending hill. No easing into it. The road tilted skyward and we followed. Legs still damp, heart rate rising, breath finding its rhythm. As we rounded a bend onto the highway, the crowds got more dense. And they were…dressed in camouflage?
That’s when I saw them.
Rows of young men lining the course. Eighteen, maybe twenty years old. Helmets. Uniforms. AK-47s held at the ready.
Hundreds of them.
They were not racing. They were guarding. Watching the hillsides. Watching us. It was President Nayib Bukele’s army. The new force that had tamed the Mara Salvatrucha1 (aka, MS-13), arresting 70,000+ in a sweeping multi-year lockdown. Their presence was both reassuring and jarring. The race existed because they stood there. The transformation required protection. Safety here was not casual, not yet. It was enforced.
I pedaled past them thinking about how different their mornings might have been a decade ago. Different uniforms. Different allegiances. Or maybe not. Maybe the same generation, just given a different future.
At the top of the climb, the course opened onto the main highway. The wind hit like a kick to the chest. Gusts barreled down the side streets, lifting plastic bags into frantic little dances. Chickens darted near the shoulder. Stray dogs wandered onto the pavement, more curious than threatening.
You do not control everything, the wind seemed to say.
We tucked low and held our lines. Dodged a dog. Absorbed another gust. Slurped water at every chance. I felt strong, noting that my winter gym sessions were paying off. Less of a waif-thin sail, more of a wedge. The highway shimmered in the heat. Ninety degrees before noon. Sweat poured down my visor, and salted my lips.
And then there were the people.
Grandmothers under umbrellas. Kids waving hand-painted signs. Teenagers blasting music from tinny speakers. Entire families gathered outside small houses and roadside stalls. Three generations leaning against the same barricade. They did not look cautious. They looked proud. Proud of their culture. Proud of their friends on the course. Celebrating with cheers and dance at every block.
This was not a corporate race dropped onto foreign soil. It felt hosted. Claimed.
Water bottles extended. High fives offered. Smiles wide and unguarded. A country that once closed itself off now opening its streets for strangers in compression socks.
When we rolled back toward the Centro Histórico, the buildings rose around us in faded pastels and colonial facades. The Catedral Metropolitana stood tall, a beacon drawing us towards the T2 party. The bike course ended among churches and plazas that had seen revolutions, protests, processions, and funerals. Now they saw triathletes stumbling off carbon frames with rubber legs.
Transition was a blur. Shoes changed. Helmet off. Visor on. Sunburn in progress.
And then the run.
Three loops. Ninety degrees. No shade worth mentioning.
The heat did not negotiate. It pressed down and stayed there. I learned the geography of every aid station. Ice in the hat. Ice down the shorts. Sponge across the neck. Water over the shoulders. Repeat. Every loop felt longer than the last. Every bag of ice felt like a small mercy.
Around me, the music grew louder. Drums. Reggaeton. Laughter. Someone had a portable speaker blasting Bad Bunny. This is his America, I thought. The one he danced across on the Super Bowl stage. Not the headlines. Not the statistics. This one. Color. Sweat. Community. Celebration layered over history instead of erased by it.
On the second loop I began bargaining with myself, walking the aid stations. On the third, I stopped bargaining and simply moved. One foot. Then the other. The sun scorched whatever romanticism I had left. There was only the body, the rhythm, and the radiant road.
But the crowds did not thin. If anything they grew. Little kids ran alongside for a few steps before peeling away. Older men clapped slowly and deliberately. Women sprayed hoses into the air so runners could pass through the mist. It felt less like spectatorship and more like participation.
We were not alone out there.
The final stretch turned downhill toward the finish. A long descent, legs fried, quads trembling from heat and climbing. The finish chute came into view, bright and improbable. I felt emptied out. Salt crusted on my face. Skin tight from sun. Vision slightly blurred at the edges. My calves were bags of snakes, twitching and writhing in a mystical pattern all their own. I glanced at the results - a 42 minute swim, a 3:05 bike, and a 1:52 run, good enough for 2nd in the M55-59 age group, and qualifying for the Ironman Worlds in Nice, France.
Delighted. Exhausted. Elated. Depleted.
And yet, the deeper victory had nothing to do with finish times.
The same asphalt that once carried fear now carried cowbells and cheers. The same air that once vibrated with gunfire now throbbed with music. The same generation of young men who might once have been pulled toward violence now stood guard so we could chase finish lines.
An Ironman 70.3 in El Salvador.
Ten years ago it would have sounded like fiction. Now it felt like testimony.
Transformation at this scale is hard to comprehend from a distance. It reads like policy. Like data. Like headlines arguing with one another. But standing in the heat, running past grandparents and soldiers and stray dogs, you feel it in something more elemental.
You feel trust.
Trust that the road will stay open.
Trust that the crowd will cheer, not scatter.
Trust that tomorrow will look more like today than yesterday.
Endurance racing is built on delayed gratification. On the belief that steady effort can change what once felt fixed. That the body, stressed and rebuilt, can become something stronger.
Maybe nations work that way too.
I came here because I could not quite believe the story. I leave knowing that whatever the politics, whatever the debates, something tangible has shifted. You cannot fake thousands of families lining a highway in ninety-degree heat to cheer for strangers, to see their loved ones triumph against all odds.
You cannot fake a sunrise turning a lake to gold while a country chooses celebration over fear.
The same asphalt.
A different heartbeat.
I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting some MS-13 representatives while working for a start up called Eaze, the “Doordash for marijuana”, in the early days of US cannabis legalization. They weren’t too keen on the company delivering on “their blocks” in Los Angeles, and were concise with their message - if you don’t stop, we will kill your soldiers (drivers), rape your women, and take control of your company. Wowza! Message received. 😳
Stellar writing. Congratulations, and I will link to it my Wednesday newsletter. Was this the first half Ironman in San Salvador?
Exceptional writing, unbelievable story, superlative athlete.
Here’s to courage!