When Lyra Pascual—a 2017 graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi at 惭ā苍辞补 and senior accountant at Nakupuna Companies—volunteered at the Ironman World Championship in 2024, an idea took root. Watching athletes cross the finish line, she wondered if she could do the same. There was a small problem—she didn’t know how to swim.
“Maybe some day,” she told herself.
Fast forward to a few months later when Pascual was talking with a friend and telling him that she wanted to learn to swim. He mentioned they should sign up for the Ironman together and she said, “if you do, I will.” And with that encouragement, they both signed up for their first race.
Pascual enlisted the help of Shidler college’s Director of Internship and Career Development Rick Varley and joined his TripleFit triathlon group. Varley has been an endurance coach for more than 25 years, his experience shaped by his own background as a collegiate sprinter. He was the first person to encourage her to get in the water.
“We didn’t work on strokes at first,” Varley said. “We just worked on breathing.”
Read about how Pascual overcame multiple challenges to cross her first finish line on pages 24–25 of the .