EActually, Uwe Schinz is hard to shake. But now the 70-year-old is sitting in the Kailua-Kona sun, just being calm himself, and then reports: “I’ve received so many lovely messages in the past few days. So many people who are happy for me and wish me luck. I never expected that.” His eyes fill with tears. “I was so happy.” He, who is rarely at a loss for a word, says nothing and narrows his eyes. 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 a relic of old times. “I used it,” he says, stroking his grey, shapely moustache, “I rode the Ironman Hamburg.” The bike is 17 years old, no frills on it. No triathlon handlebars, nothing. It looked like a dinosaur in Hamburg between all the high-tech machines.
The bike suits the Schleswig-Holsteiner: enduring, indestructible, unique and idiosyncratic in the best sense of the word. He didn’t start walking until he was in his 40s. 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 with his wife for a week and is making his debut at the legendary Ironman World Championship. With 70 years.
Uwe Schinz points to his name. All the starters are immortalized on this wall in Kailua-Kona
Source: Uwe Schinz
This Thursday he starts at 7.25 p.m. after the professional women (6.25 p.m.) in the field of age group athletes over 3.8 km swimming, 180 km cycling and 42.195 km running (the professional men and other age groups start on October 8th). He left his red racing bike at home, Schinz bought a modern, used triathlon bike.
It started with herniated discs
But the test drive on the competition track was suboptimal – to put it mildly. The notorious wind blew fiercely and made life difficult for him. “And the sun burned without a break. In addition, the radiation from the black lava fields,” he says. “I was floored. 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 doesn’t want to be without sport anymore. For him it is simply a part of life. “I need sport to let off steam, I have too many bumblebees up my sleeve and I like to push myself to the limit,” he says. “It just excites me. And I want to keep this fitness level.”
It started with two herniated discs. Schinz was 49 and was due for an operation. He decided against it, went to rehab and met a young man who took him on his run. “Six and a half kilometers, after that I was dead,” he remembers.
But he kept going. “I felt like I didn’t have any back pain for two or three hours afterwards.” The doctor sent him to running school to learn how to walk healthily. On the last day of rehab, Uwe ran 13 kilometers. And within a year his first marathon. “It’s never too late to start exercising,” he says.
And then he walked through the Sahara
Schinz kept running. Keep going. “It was good for me,” he explains. “And it was a stress reliever for my job in the field.” 250 km “Marathon des Sables” in the Sahara, 275 km Grand-To-Grand-Ultra in the Grand Canyon, 100 km run in Biel (Switzerland) and the one around the other big bike tour. Just to name examples. He also does this for others and is involved in “Appen musiziert”, an initiative that helps seriously ill children. That’s important to him.
After two smaller triathlon competitions, Schinz ventured into the long distance in 2017. Why? “I’m a little crazy and see what else could be?” he says. His cell phone ringtone goes with it: “Born to be wild” by Steppenwolf. The long distance, the atmosphere there, the people – he liked it.
“Suddenly a wreck. I fought there.”
But his search for adventure was stopped abruptly in 2018. prostate cancer. The trouble came after the operation. “In the morning I was supposed to go to the washbasin arm in arm with the nurse. I didn’t achieve that. It got pitch dark.” Pulmonary embolism. Before the operation, he had run 80 kilometers 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 up to the town sign, 150 meters back and forth, and was exhausted. That was all I could do.”
The physical was one thing, mentally it was more difficult. “Suddenly a wreck. I fought there.” The fitness he had built up before 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’ve had small memory gaps since 2018.” He quickly remembers: the Harz crossing with more than 50 kilometers.
It doesn’t bother him that he has to think about dates, places and other things from time to time. Schinz is happy where he is. He has cleaned up his life, separated from a few people who, as he says, “are not good for him. I don’t want to argue anymore and try to see only the positive,” he says. “I enjoy each day more now because I know it can end in a second. And I don’t procrastinate anymore.”
Blue-green algae allergy and wheel fall before departure
Before he dared to start at the Ironman Hamburg in 2021, he had a sports medicine check-up. “All values excellent. Biological age 55,” he exults. But he hadn’t really prepared for the competition. Carbohydrate intake and food strategy? none. To swim? “I swam with my child’s crawl style, sometimes breaststroke in between, then I got cramps and had to crawl again,” he says.
In the end he finished after 14:49 hours and unexpectedly secured the starting place for Hawaii. Then he took swimming lessons.
Schinz on Hawaii: an unexpected dream
Source: Uwe Schinz
He has been training intensively for the big day since the beginning of the year. “I find his will so impressive! I have to keep slowing him down,” says coach Katja Ritzmann. Since then he has swum 80 kilometers in the lake, about the same in the hall, cycled 3500 kilometers outside since March and run 770 kilometers.
He also looked for a job to finance the Hawaii adventure. “My pension is good and enough for normal life with holidays,” he 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 crash after a collision with a car during the last long test drive at home. Not nice.
But nothing that could stop Uwe Schinz.
Return after fall drama – “Never felt so good as this time”
After the dramatic fall at the Ironman World Championships in Utah, Andreas Dreitz had to worry about his career. The triathlon professional is all the more pleased to be able to take part in the Ironman in Hawaii again.
Source: WORLD / Melanie Haack