‘76 GRAD LIVES, PREACHES
By Mary Dieter
Anybody can complete a triathlon, says the woman who ranked sixth in the world in the 2017 sprint World Triathlon Championship. The woman who is a six-time qualifier for the championship. The woman who in 2019 was second in a qualifying event for the Ironman 70.3 world championship. That’s 70.3 miles: 1.2 miles swimming, 56 miles biking and 13.1 miles running. But before you dismiss Sue Engle Reynolds ’76 as a patronizing elite athlete, know this: She was that anybody. She did it, and she has done it more than a dozen times, with more races on the horizon. And when she completed her first triathlon, she was halfway through a six-year journey during which she lost 200 pounds. Reynolds was not overweight nor was she an athlete when she was studying zoology at DePauw in the 1970s. “When I left DePauw and started working, I became a teacher,” she said. “I loved my job, just loved it. And I often would stay up all night, writing lesson plans.” She would eat candy or cookies to stay awake and “the weight just started coming on” until she reached 335 pounds. She was sensitive to societal standards, of course, and dieted, but the diets failed because “I was trying to please someone else’s expectations of me,” she said. In 2010, “nothing extraordinary happened. It was just one day I thought ’this is
26 I DEPAUW MAGAZINE SUMMER 2021
