“I didn’t take it for granted,” said Moorestown resident Dr. Ana Cafengiu of her recent completion of Ironman Lake Placid, a triathlon event held in New York. “It’s a great feeling and it doesn’t go away. For a few weeks I woke up with a smile thinking, ‘I’m an Ironman. That’s really cool. I can’t believe I did it.’”
Moorestown resident Dr. Ana Cafengiu participated in Ironman Lake Placid on July 20, crossing the finish line in 14 hours and 31 minutes.
“I was just glad that I completed it, but when I heard the time, I was doubly proud,” Cafengiu said.
Held in the village of Lake Placid, New York, the triathlon consists of a 2.4-mile swim in Mirror Lake, a 112-mile bike course through the Adirondack Mountains and a full 26.2-mile marathon past scenic routes. The event is one of the longest running races on the Ironman circuit.
“I didn’t take it for granted,” Cafengiu said. “It’s a great feeling and it doesn’t go away. For a few weeks I woke up with a smile thinking, ‘I’m an Ironman. That’s really cool. I can’t believe I did it.'”
Cafengiu, a wife and a mother of two, operates her podiatry and sports medicine practice – Cafengiu Podiatry & Sports Medicine – in Moorestown. In 1997 she received her Doctorate of Podiatric Medicine from Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine in Philadelphia. After that she went on to complete a three-year surgical residency at St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey. Cafengiu was selected for a sports medicine fellowship at Virginia Mason Sports Medicine Center in Seattle, Washington, which she completed in 2001. Although she wanted to stay in Washington, she couldn’t find a practice there that suited her. Somehow, she found her way to Moorestown where she found her true love, Michael, and since then they’ve built a life together balancing work and family. She, Michael, daughter Sofia and son Sam love to travel all over, going off the grid and connecting with nature.
“It just really always becomes so therapeutic as a family,” Cafengiu said. “We have such good talks, and we don’t plan it. We don’t have an agenda. My husband will go walking with our daughter or then he’ll go walking with Sam, or I’ll be with my daughter early in the morning or she’ll join me for a run, or my son and I will be trying out a canoe or a paddle boat… It’s just stuff like that… It becomes these conversations that we’re not going to have time for later on when we hit the world again, when we come back home. It’s a reboot.”
Prior to Ironman Lake Placid, Cafengiu competed in local races to use as her training days (training for Ironman took Cafengiu one year). She’s participated in sprint triathlons – a shorter version of a triathlon, with typical distances of a 750-meter swim, a 20-kilometer bike ride and a 5-kilometer run. At the time that she competed in those races she wasn’t sure if she could’ve fully swum the entire distance. She had learned that skill later in life but looking back now, she realized she wasn’t afraid to fail.
“I’m not afraid to fail, and I think that led me to do races,” Cafengiu acknowledged. “Even appropriate races, ones that beginners would do, and each time I did one I would learn more and I would practice more.
“I learned to swim in a straight line; I learned to follow the rules of triathlon training… Because you have to be able to move your legs from one sport to the next. Initially after you ride on a bike, you get off the bike and you feel like you can’t even move your legs and run.
But you realize that you learn how that feels, and you practice that transition over and over, and then you can do it in a race,” she explained.
Cafengiu took the next step following the sprint triathlons. It was through the encouragement of her daughter’s soccer coach that she competed in a Half Ironman, also known as Ironman 70.3, which stands for the total distance covered in miles during the event. It consists of a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13.1-mile run. It was the longest she had ever swum and the longest she had ever biked. She had originally wanted to wait until her kids were in college before competing in Ironman, but it was that same coach – and her family – who helped encourage her to go for it. She trained for Ironman by competing in smaller races – from the sprint to the Olympic Distance Triathlon to the Half Ironman – getting to a place where she was fit enough to cover the distance of Ironman.
“To go into this race not knowing if I could cover the full distance was more of a mental fortitude than anything else,” Cafengiu said. “I put one foot in front of the other and kept moving forward. That’s what got me to the end.”
Cafengiu explained that she didn’t care how slow she went or if she had to crawl, all that mattered was completing the biggest race she had ever done. The night before, she met a woman who gave her advice. Not only did the woman tell Cafengiu to make sure to keep her fuel up the entire time, but she also shared that she always thought about what was on her lucky socks. She told Cafengiu that on her lucky socks read, “She believed she could, so she did.”
“Guess what I was thinking about on – (for example) – mile 87?” Cafengiu quipped. “‘She believed she could, so she did.’ ‘She believed she could, so she did’ … That was the thing I said to myself, and I was also very taken aback by how encouraging everyone was. You are all doing this race together, but that’s what kept me going was also knowing that my family was at the end.”
Cafengiu with her favorite support team – husband Michael (second from left), daughter Sofia and son Sam.
Knowing that her family was waiting for her was one of several things that motivated Cafengiu to keep going, along with focusing on that present moment. The experience, she noted, was also surreal for another reason.
“Sometimes I was so taken aback by the nature around me,” she said. “It was the most gorgeous backdrop and scenery, that I kind of forgot that I was suffering. I just kept moving and I kept peddling and fueling and eating and drinking… It was more in my head than anything else. I didn’t feel my body as much as I felt my brain working.”
Ironman Lake Placid was a feeling of accomplishment for Cafengiu, a feeling of excitement for something that she once thought was impossible to do. At the same time, it was a feeling that she can’t describe.
“It was a feeling of everything coming together and working out, knowing that part of it was hard work, part of it was great support and part of it was good luck,” she said. “Truthfully, I wouldn’t say no (to competing again), but definitely not now. At this point I’m just happy to know that I did one, and rest assured that that’s under my belt.”
“She’s always been a runner, but this is something that she wanted to do,” noted Bobby McTaggart, a neighbor of Cafengiu’s. “She set her mind to it, she was committed, and she did it.
“Doing something like Ironman takes a commitment, and I’ve never seen her do something halfway. I watched the (livestream of the end of the race when they cross the finish line), and I was overly excited… It was like the Olympics or something and I knew somebody competing, so I watched her cross the finish line and it was so cool.”
