About Lucy Smith

"As a child, I loved to run more than anything!"
- Lucy

Lucy Smith is a professional athlete, coach, speaker, writer, and mother of two. For over twenty years Lucy has been one of Canada's most winning and versatile endurance athletes with unparalleled results over a wide range of distances and disciplines.

Since participating in her first fun run at age eleven, Lucy has developed her athletic career into a passionate full-time and life long pursuit of excellence that has been rewarded with two Silver Medals at the World Duathlon Championships, 19 Canadian Championship titles and countless podium finishes at international triathlon, duathlon and running competitions. Lucy has excelled over a range of events from 5000m, 10,00m, 10k road, cross country running, bike time trial, duathlon, Olympic distance triathlon, ½ Ironman, ½ marathon, marathon, and Ironman. She has captained many national teams and has always been a leader to her peers, from continuing high performance while balancing motherhood to coaching and helping others excel.

Lucy spent her childhood and teenage years in Bedford, Nova Scotia (pop. 8000) enjoying team sports and solo outdoor adventures equally. She explored every possible athletic or competitive activity in her small town: sailing, running, canoeing, hiking, cross country skiing, basketball, soccer and rock climbing. Cross training was not a term that was used when she was 15, and women didn't even run the Olympic Marathon until Lucy was 17, but all the early sports gave Lucy the dream to be a runner. Lucy loved to run more than anything.

While at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Lucy transformed her talents for endurance and competition and chose distance running as an outlet for her focus, endurance, drive and competitive nature. By the time she was 25, Lucy had been to four World Championships in Cross Country Running, flown to international races as far as Japan and China, racked up an impressive number of Canadian national team singlets, and interesting global destinations. In 1990 Lucy made the important move across the country to train in Victoria and Vancouver with strong high performance groups. It was while living in Vancouver that she ran into Lance Watson, a triathlete and triathlon coach. Lance would eventually become her husband and coach.

Failing to make the Olympics in 1996 in the 5000m (by a mere 4 seconds) was disappointing, but her partner Lance looked at her talent and encouraged Lucy to take up another sport -- cycling -- and helped shape her into a formidable Duathlete: in the course of three years, with Lance's coaching and promotional skills, Lucy became a dominant force on the International Duathlon circuit. In 1997, Lucy won her first World Championship Medal, and began dominating the American and European Duathlon races. Learning how to swim only added another challenge to Lucy's career and a chance to compete with the best triathletes in the world. By 1998, Lucy had improved her swim to the point where she was living as a professional triathlete in Paris and was runner up on the European Triathlon Union circuit that year.

If learning how to swim open water was challenging, the biggest and most exciting challenge was yet to come: motherhood; and being the partner to one of the world's best triathlon coaches leading into the inaugural Olympic Triathlon. Lance started as Head Coach of the Canadian Triathlon Training Centre and personal coach to the irrepressible and talented Simon Whitfield. For the next 6 years, Lucy would train at the High Performance Centre at Pacific Sport Victoria, in British Columbia with some of the best known and successful triathletes in the world.

In 1999, and 12 months before the 2000 Olympics, though Lucy was in perhaps the prime of her career, she decided to have a child, and Maia was born in June 2000, right into the intensity of pre Olympic fever, and only months before Simon Whitfield won his life and sport-changing Gold Medal in Triathlon.

Four years later, Lucy tried again for the Canadian Olympic Team, giving it her all in an effort to run the newly raised Canadian 10,000m standard time of 31:30. (In 2000, it was 32:40). Although she ran the fastest Canadian time that year and a new personal best of 32:46, it wasn�t fast enough. The elusive Olympian book closed and another chapter began, as Lucy took another maternity leave from competing to have a second child. Ross was born in March 2005- and now with two children, Lucy took on full time motherhood and balancing a high performance career. Some athletes train and rest and eat. Lucy trained, raced and ate, but never rested, preferring to spend her down time with her children at the playground, beach, swimming pool and the many amazing parks around Victoria.

In the 2006 and 2007 seasons, Lucy returned to high performance once more. In a series of career highlight performances, Lucy won a Silver Medal at the World Duathlon Championships (10 years after her first Silver!) and a 4th place at the World Long Distance Duathlon Championships, a Gold at the Canadian Duathlon Championships, Gold at Canadian Half Ironman Championships, Gold at Canadian 10k Championships and Canadian Half Marathon Championships, and finished 8th at Ironman Canada. She rounded out her 40th year by running the New York City Marathon as a masters athlete, where she finished a happy 2nd.

Lucy's career has spanned over two decades and in that time she has witnessed huge changes in sport: womens ever changing role from inclusion to re-shaping how women can have a professional career in sport as both competitors and coaches. Now, with two children and a successful career behind her, Lucy is most interested in the way women are faced with the greater and more powerful challenge of transformation: how women can embrace and excel in the fields of high performance while still being the women they want to be: caring for themselves, their families, their communities, and the whole world.

Through her dedication to excellence, teamwork, quality, personal best and life-fulfillment, Lucy continues to compete and find joy twenty years into her commitment to racing at the international level.

Lucy continues to train at PacificSport in Victoria, British Columbia and is coached by her husband, Olympic Gold Medal Triathlon coach and LifeSport Coaching founder Lance Watson.

Personal Bests

5K: 15:40
10K: 32:40
1/2 Marathon: 1:13
Marathon: 2:38
Ironman: 10:06

Resume

Community Involvement: a recognized sport leader and spokesperson in her community.

Lucy coaches and mentors athletes of all ages and abilities.

Board Member of Pacific Sport Victoria, representing a large portion of Canada's Summer Olympians in Victoria

Lucy is a polished motivational speaker who regularly presents to the corporate world and the athletic community. Lucy did over 30 engagements in 2006-07 alone.

She is an invited coach and speaker to sporting events across the country.

Lucy is a regularly published writer on topics of sport, training and sport-experience in major international magazines such as Cooking Light, HerSport, Inside Triathlon, Impact, Transitions, Triathlete, Australian Triathlete, and various newspapers and other publication.

Education:

B.Ed University of British Columbia (1997)
B.A. Dalhousie University, Halifax (1990)
NCCP Theory Level 3 (2005)

Date of Birth: April 27, 1967

Family

Lucy and her husband Lance Watson have two children, Maia (2000) and Ross (2005).