At 7 a.m. Anne Thilges swims 2.4 miles in open water. Then she removes her wetsuit, cap and goggles and gets ready for a 112-mile bike ride. Finally, with aching feet and stomach, she sets out on a 26.2-mile run. At about 6:30 p.m., the finish line is finally in sight. She has just completed another Ironman race.

Thilges, a full-time SF State professor of human anatomy and physiology lab and coach of the SF State running club, is an amateur Ironman athlete.

On Sunday, April 13, she competed in Tempe, Ariz. in her 11th Ironman race where she finished 655th with a time of 12:53.02 hours. Because of the extreme heat and high winds, of the 2,035 athletes who started the
swim, only 1,574 finished the race.

"The wind was brutal. Really the worst wind I ever had to deal with," Thilges said.

Despite the wind making it difficult for her to make her bike go in a straight line she was satisfied with her swimming and biking.

"The wind and the heat made this race more difficult, but for me it was the dry air. This hurt me but did not hurt some other people," Thilges said. "Just like life. Some people find challenges where others do not. It is about how we deal with our challenges that makes us great. "

The 41-year-old professor has been an athlete all her life. As a teenager, she dove, swam and ran before developing a true passion for long-distance races like marathons.

She has always felt and continues to feel the urge to find new challenges.

“I am always wondering what I can do next,” Thilges said. “I try to find something new to do.”

After her first marathon in Chicago in 1989, she moved to Sydney, Australia in 1995 for a management counseling job. This gave her the opportunity to train and compete in a country where sports are part of the way of life.

“In Australia, I had many people to train with,” Thilges said. “It was all fun with my friends. It was not work at all.”

A year later, in Australia, she competed in what is known as the most grueling sporting event in the world: the Ironman triathlon, followed by the New Zealand Ironman in 1997. And the list goes on: Switzerland, Canada, Austria and California.

For any high-level athlete like her, daily training is essential to reach peek performances.

She rides her bike five to six days a week either from Russian Hill where she lives to SF State or for longer rides beyond the Golden Gate. She puts on her running shoes three or four days a week to run from anywhere between 30 minutes and two and a half hours. She swims twice a week in the SF State pool and the Terra Linda outdoor pool in San Rafael.

“She has just as much—if not more—mental strength as any athlete I can think of,” her husband Brad Thilges, who is not an Ironman athlete, said. “I've seen her will herself out of bed some days to train even though she is very tired and has a long day ahead of her.”

On Tuesdays, she coaches a group of runners in the SF State running club who can comment on her dedication and energy.

“She is the most inspirational person I know,” said Matt Cool, an international relations student and runner.

“When we are running, she tells us we can do better and then when we did it, she encourages us even more, saying we can do even better,” said Donnie Lair, a runner in the club.

At such a high level of sport, Thilges must make concessions and compromises. While the triathlete perceives the lack of sleep as the most unpleasant aspect of her life, her diet has not really changed. To help her body get prepared to reach its best potential, she usually avoids going to restaurants.

“I try to eat healthy with a lot of vegetables, fruits and fish,” she said. “I also have my junk food days but I have never really liked fried food.”

Balancing her professional life and training is something she says she does better than others. A calendar in one hand, a pen and a piece of paper in the other, she lists all the things she has to do on the next day, by order of priority.

“I try to have my routine,” she said.

Although the majority of people would regard her efforts and dedication to the sport as displeasing and exhausting, she succeeds in keeping trainings fun by practicing with friends.

“With my friends, we spend the day cycling, have lunch and we have a chat on the bike. It’s a lot of fun,” she said.

“Her smile and enthusiasm for life are contagious, but don't be fooled, she is a fierce competitor with herself,” Leslie Bull, an Ironman athlete and a training partner of Thilges, said. “Anne is a modest but true competitor who knows how to train and dig deep on the day.”

Her seriousness and motivation paid off. In 2005, she finished second among all the women at the California Man Triathlon with a time of 12 hours 21 minutes and 25 seconds. But Switzerland in 1999 was the setting of her best Ironman time ever: 11 hours and 24 minutes.