For the past nine years, resuming her career as a world-class triathlon athlete had been a recurring dream for former world champion Cameron Randolph, the coach of the Wood River Dolphins swim team.
She took a break from the sport to bear and raise her children, but now has her sights set on possibly reclaiming her title as the top women's off-road triathlon athlete in the world.
Randolph, who lives in Hailey with her family, is now once again competing. At the age of 35, she competed in October at the Nissan X-Terra World Championships on Maui in Hawaii and placed 10th in the women's professional class.
At the age of 26, she won the event in 1997.
The off-road triathlon event consists of a one-mile swim, an 18-mile mountain bike ride and a six-mile run. Randolph completed this year's race in three hours, 30 minutes and one second.
"It would be great to win it again, but the competition is really stiff and you can't afford to be weak in any area," Randolph said. "Even if I never win it again, just the challenge of pushing myself to see how fast I can go is enough."
Randolph, a native of North Carolina, has been a competitive swimmer since the age of 6. She competed in swimming and triathlon for four years at the University of North Carolina and later moved to Colorado, where she met her husband, Greg, at the Olympics Training Center in Colorado Springs.
Randolph said she and Greg spent their one-year wedding anniversary competing at the X-Terra competition in 1997, the year she won the national championship.
She and her family moved to Hailey a few years ago.
Randolph said returning to competition had been a "recurring dream" since she left the sport after winning the world championship. While training to defend her title the next year, Randolph learned she was pregnant and chose not to race.
Nine years and two children later—7-year-old Luma and 2-year-old Lola—Randolph found herself on Oct. 29 at Makena Beach in Maui ready to compete against the best off-road triathlon athletes in the world.
The race began with an ocean swim. Randolph, a strong swimmer, came out of the water in third place.
Next came the bike course, an 18-mile climb of 2,000 vertical feet on the flanks of Haleakala Volcano. Randolph described it as a "challenging course filled with loose lava rocks and nasty tire-deflating thorns."
"Lava rocks are very unforgiving and it was a huge relief to make it through the bike leg without leaving any skin on the course," she said. "A lot of racers weren't so lucky. You wouldn't have believed all of the people on the side of the trail with mechanicals or race-ending wounds from crashing."
The running leg of the race was along a sandy beach and through a contrasting tropical forest.
Randolph was pleased with her performance and claims to have finished the race with a smile on her face. Deservedly so—she finished an impressive 10th among a field of 26 pro women.
"I love the challenge of the X-Terra races and have already committed to doing it again next year," she said. "It'll be interesting to compare the 26-year-old Cameron to the 36-year-old. Even if I don't win, I think the 36-year-old will be having more fun."
But for now, Randolph Cameron is in training, working to perfect her skills.
"You pretty much have to train all year around," she said.
Randolph swims and runs regularly and skis in the winter to stay in top condition. She'll be competing in other triathlon events throughout the year, but next year's X-Terra is the race that has her focus.
"If being at my best gets me the win, then that's just icing on the cake," she said.
After a 9-year hiatus from triathlon competition, Cameron Randolph, a former world off-road triathlon champion, placed 10th in the professional women?s class at the Nissan X-Terra World Championships in Hawaii last Month.
Photo by Greg Randolph
