She’s the 2008 Ironman 70.3 world champion (it’s also known as the the “half-Ironman”) and a former Olympian who placed fourth in the triathlon at the 2000 summer games in Sydney, Australia. Today, Zieger works as a cannabis epidemiologist, using her degree from the John Hopkins School of Public Health.

“I loved the regimen of it,” Zieger says of her early love of swimming that led to triathlons. “I really enjoyed pushing myself on a daily basis; I enjoyed setting goals and then seeing what I could do to achieve them.”