Elia Ioannou never saw herself as an athlete. Even when others saw a runner in her, she dismissed it. At seventeen, she joined a gym and would spend her time running alone on a treadmill for an hour at a time, lost in her own world. Her gym instructors said she should try running competitively. “I’m too old to start now,” she told them. “I’m already seventeen, and others have been running since they were kids.” Twenty years on, two Limassol Marathon victories, and a personal best of 2:51:48 later, she is still running. And still, she says, finding freedom in it every single step.
Elia Ioannou is a Cyprus national champion in middle and long distances. She has competed in major European marathons, including Rotterdam, Barcelona, and Hamburg, and has won the Limassol Marathon twice, both times finishing under three hours.
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Running came into her life almost by accident. Her father would watch track and field competitions on television, and she would join him sometimes, mesmerised by the athletes pushing their bodies to their limits. Their muscles straining and their eyes fixed on one goal: the finish line. Then one day, when she was twelve, whilst walking with her parents at a local park in Nicosia, she suddenly got this urge to walk faster, then faster still, until she thought: if I’m walking anyway, why not run? She ran. And ran some more. That was it, she was hooked.
At twenty-three, she found a coach, Giorgos Kyperountas, who said the same thing the gym instructors had been saying for years — that she had something — and this time she listened. At the time, she was working as a professional make-up artist on television productions, long days that began from eight in the morning and lasted until nine in the evening. For most, the thought of adding a training schedule to an already full schedule was not doable. But Elia was committed. She started training alone at one of the Nicosia stadiums at four in the morning. She squeezed in strength training whenever she could. Slowly, she began to see progress. That was when Kyperountas introduced her to Giorgos Loukaidis, who has been her coach for twenty years and to whom she credits as central to everything she has achieved.
Even though she no longer works a full shift, her life is no less hectic, nor has her running training become any easier. During marathon preparation blocks, she runs six days a week, covering 150 kilometres per week, with two strength sessions and one physiotherapy session every week. The physiotherapy is non-negotiable. The fear of injury, she says, is always there, especially coming up to the time of her races.
She knows that cost better than most. Last year, while preparing for the Berlin Marathon, she tripped, sprained her ankle, and spent three months out of training. It was, she says without hesitation, the worst summer of her life. The recovery was so slow, and she struggled with anxiety the whole time. “I fell very low,” she says. “One of the lowest points I can remember.” Then she came back. Her first race back, she won. Then the half-marathon that followed, she ran in 1:23. Each return, she says, has made her stronger than she was before.
Besides a full work and training schedule, Elia is also a devoted mother to two. Motherhood and running, in her telling, are not opposites; they are woven together. There was always a fear that having children would negatively affect her running, but that was not her experience. After her second child was born, she came back stronger still, running her first full marathon eight months postpartum. Motherhood, she says, made her more disciplined, more aware of time, and less willing to give up.
“I don’t think women should be afraid. A woman gets stronger through it.”
What surprised her most, returning after each pregnancy, was realising how much she had needed it all along. “Through running I found myself,” she says. “I felt good. I felt happy. I needed it.” Without it, she says, she is a completely different person.
To the young women who want to start running, Elia wants them to believe in themselves. “Dare,” she says. “Age doesn’t matter. We should never betray our dreams. Stay focused on your dream and fulfil it.”
And running itself, after twenty years? “It is part of my life. It makes me strong. It makes me feel free. When I finish training, I feel I can face whatever comes at me that day. With positivity and a clear mind.”
Elia Ioannou is a guest on The Future Makers: Women Building Cyprus. The full episode, in Greek with English subtitles, is available to watch now.
The Future Makers Podcast is a series of in-depth conversations about how future-makers are made, in Cyprus and beyond. Host Annetta Benzar sits down with people who are a leading force in our shared future and looks past the titles. Together, they travel back to the people and moments that shaped them, walk through the choices and challenges they are living through now, and look ahead to the futures they are trying to build.
The first season, Women Building Cyprus, follows women whose lives and decisions are changing what this island can be.
A production of The Future Media.
