If he decided to sign up for the fashion of imparting productivity courses, Marina Muñoz (Cuéllar, Segovia, 1999) could fill auditoriums with one that was titled How to squeeze on weekends (and not die in the attempt). In the last seven years, the agenda of the current runner -up of Spain of Duathlon has not had a hole: it is what it has for combining the high -level triathlete career with the degree of medicine, without forgetting the family or friends.
With the organization by flag, Marina Muñoz has reached everything and has done very well: just a subject and a final degree of degree of becoming a generalist medical, seeks his first great international podium as a professional in the Duathlon Europeans who are played in Rumia-Pomorskie, Poland, this weekend (April 26 and 27).
It would be the best reward for the girl who discovered the triathlon at age nine, when in her town they opened a children’s school dedicated to this specialty and her passion for sport led her to want to try it. Then, the friendships he made there, how much he enjoyed training and the “adorable” coaches that had the kept hooked to this sport that requires strength, legs, head and lung to handle himself well in three disciplines: swimming, bicycle and career on foot.
The duathlon is like the terrestrial brother of the triathlon: it runs, pedals and runs again, with variable distances according to the modality. In the sprintMarina’s favorite for its explosiveness, triathletes run five kilometers, before getting on the bike for 20 and concluding with another 2.5 km of standard. There is no water involved, but the physical demand is still very high, especially for the legs, which do not have a second in truce.
“I do not come from swimming or other sports, I am a pure triathlete,” says the Segoviana, in a video call with the country, from the concentration of the Spanish team in Sierra Nevada. “And what I like the most is the bicycle, because it has always been better and because, in addition, it allows you to do cycatourism: you go out to train by spectacular sites and you can go talking to your partner; it is more dynamic.”
Dynamism, passion and taste for the most demanding challenges is also what this woman of light but fibrous complexion and powerful legs gives off, to which nothing seems to be resisted. In the Sub23 category, while its first medicine courses were taken clean, three bronzes were hung that pointed it out as the great promise of the Spanish female triathlon: one in the Duathlon European, another in the Cross Triathlon World Cup and another in the Duathlon World Championship.
“I have always organized very well. I have never set aside my friends or my partner for being wrong. In fact, some weekends, when I was saturated with studies and sport, it was I who told them ‘We are going to take a walk, for God’s! “Of course, I have always prioritized studies.”
It will soon stop being like that. About to turn 26 and after seven career in which the elbows he competed, Marina Muñoz has always turned to his priorities: he will dedicate himself completely to triathlon, when in a couple of months he graduated as a doctor.
“It’s now or never,” says the current leader of the national Duathlon ranking with a smile and total conviction. “I feel like enjoying the sport one hundred percent and seeing if I can dedicate to it for it, even if it is short, and see what happens. Now I am there, to see what happens.”
In ‘He to see what happens’, but with a clear and ambitious objective on the horizon, the Los Angeles 2028 Games, the Olympic dream that many triathletes fulfill around thirty.
Like medicine, triathlon is a long breath discipline. To physical demands, we must add the mental strength necessary to manage efforts and tolerate extreme suffering without losing constancy, and a tactical skill in transitions (the passage from one discipline to another) that often decides championships.
-“I am good in the transitions, which is something that conditions you the whole race, because it is a time when you can cut seconds for free,” explains the Segoviana, which still goes down to the street from under home, places the bike on the wall and repeats one and a thousand times the process of running, putting on the helmet and going by bike, before leaving it again and putting on the shoes to internalize the gestures and replicate them in the competitions think.
“I love what I do and travel to compete, but I have always had the feeling of going a little weighted by the studies,” he confesses. “The May and June competitions coincide with the final exams and I have not been able to enjoy them all nor have I been able to train at all well in those times,” the almost medical Marina Muñoz explains.
It is years and those who have been delaying their great international leap, because trips take time to study and their weekly days until this course had no respite. The mornings passed them at the University of Valladolid; In the afternoon, from four to half and half or eight, he trained; Then, I studied a little before dinner and took the books again before going to sleep, about twelve at night.
Even so, the results were arriving, while taking time from where he didn’t have it to train every year a little more and looked for the best conditions to overcome.
Her desire to improve were those that, with 17 years, led her to leave the family home in Cuéllar and move to Valladolid. At the Río Esgueva Sports Tecnification Center, a new training group, a new coach and a sports residence in which to make studies and high -level training was easier.
“Going right in the second baccalaureate, which is the most decisive course, it was a bit crazy … If you put yourself as an expectation to enter a race in which they ask for high notes, you pass it a little bad, because you are crawling compared to your classmates who have a little more time and that shows a lot,” says Marina Muñoz with the perspective of time. “But I wanted to train more, to give a jump and the training group of my town fell a little short.”
Years later, with 22 and the first quality jump already given, it was in search of the second with its incorporation to the National Caetlón Caep Center of Soria. There, along with seven other triathletes, for three years the high performance group directed by Jaime Izquierdo, his partner.
“Here we all have similar objectives and, when you train with a group in which there are also boys, girls helps us to progress more,” says the woman who also occupies the second position of the national triathlon ranking.
With his sports transfer to Soria while still studying in Valladolid, Marina Muñoz decided to do the fifth of Medicine in two years “to breathe a little” before facing a last practical course that has begun to draw the way to its specialization: Family Medicine or Traumatology. He has not yet decided. And either is in a hurry. Now, priority is triathlon and that Olympic dream of being in Los Angeles.
On his agenda, however, he will continue to reserve a space for his vocation. Whether it does not conceive of one without the other, whether by habit or by pure masochism, the Segovian triathlete will appear to the MIR in January 2026, not to get a place, but not to leave their other vocation aside.
Now, the academic can expect; Sport, no. There are trains that only pass once in life and she wants to get on this and not keep the ‘And if I had tried?’
