Last November, Jones competed in the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Marbella, Spain, and won in his 65-to-69 age group by 10 minutes. The half-distance triathlon includes a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run—totaling 70.3 miles in a single day.
“I’ve enjoyed the satisfaction you get from the hours of training that pay off on the race deck,” he says. A long-distance swimmer at Dartmouth, Jones says he has always gravitated toward endurance sports. He completed his first triathlon in 1985 and “was just hooked”—then competed from 1987 to 1996 while working full time as a bond trader in New York City. “It was a big part of my life,” he adds, though he stepped away after starting a family.
Now living in Boulder, Colorado, Jones returned to racing at age 51 and won a national championship. By age 55, he didn’t think he could run anymore but started training again three years ago when his son expressed an interest in racing a Half Ironman. “Some people say age is just the number, which isn’t true,” Jones says. “But with a lot of discipline—between vitamins, health, and strength training—you can achieve far more later in age than what people thought 40 years ago.”
For Jones, there are no off days. “It’s easy to postpone things that aren’t comfortable—and a lot of my training’s uncomfortable,” he says. He works out 20 to 25 hours a week during race season, 10 in the winter. “I enjoy being on the front end of what a 65-year-old body can do,” says Jones, who plans to compete in the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in October.
“Eben has always had a motor that doesn’t quit or falter in any endeavor he undertakes,” says friend and former teammate Tod Wurst ’82, who attended the Marbella event. “The dedication and commitment to the rigorous and time-consuming training it requires to compete on a national and world triathlon stage cannot be overestimated.”
