VERO BEACH — When two-time world champion triathlete Lotte Branigan came in seconds away from first place in a 2008 race, she didn’t realize how close she was to timing something else – her contractions.
Turns out Edward Stephen Branigan V was sprinting toward the finish himself, born 2 1/2 weeks early, less than a month after that race.
Considering Edward’s gene pool, that should have come as no surprise.
The Branigan clan is without a doubt the fastest family in Vero Beach, earning them spots on national teams and for Lotte Branigan, world championships.
In 2002, Lotte Branigan, whose mother is an avid marathoner, came in third in the highly competitive 30-34 age group at the notoriously grueling World Championship Ironman triathlon in Hawaii.
In 2005 and ’06, she was the world champion in Olympic-distance triathlon, representing her native Denmark in races in Germany and Switzerland.
Also in ’06, she was the top overall amateur woman at the World Championship Ironman contest, with the combined wins earning her the title of USA Triathlete of the Year.
Lotte (pronounced “Lotta”) Branigan, 37, is married to Eddie Branigan, 38, the winner of Vero’s first triathlon last year.
Now one of the area’s most serious cycling competitors, he is a 10-time USA triathlon All-American and a five-time member of Team USA in international competition.
“It’s the closest any of us are going to get to an Olympic-type experience,” he says. “You’re wearing the USA colors, and you’re racing for more than just yourself.”
Eddie is the son of Dr. Ed Branigan, himself once named to the national team and a USA Triathlon All- American; and Christina Branigan, 63, the centrifugal force that holds the racing family together, cheering them from the sidelines, and taking care of Edward full time.
Never one much into sports, she took up dancing soon after surgery for colon cancer several years ago.
It has been her passion ever since – she goes four days a week.
“You cha-cha for 50 minutes, and you’re a little sweat-hog,” she says.
As for toddler Edward, his standard pace is a tip-toed, high-kneed trot. He hasn’t quite gotten the hang of swimming, though, and he has yet to show much interest in his three tricycles, dwarfed by the dozens of pricey bikes hanging from the ceiling of the Branigan garage.
But he might soon be egged on by some competition: The Branigans are expecting a baby girl in November.
Lotte Branigan, in her eighth month of pregnancy and still running, has her eye on a $600 double jogging stroller so they can continue to train, handing off babies like batons in a relay.
Meanwhile, the tag team of in-laws waits on its mark.
Ed Branigan, an ophthalmologist, has been a distance runner for 50 years — “since before they had shoes for it,” as his son puts it.
Branigan, who turns 66 in October, ran the Boston Marathon back in 1969, when the running craze was just taking hold.
For the first time that year, more than 1,000 entrants overwhelmed race officials that for a century had been accustomed to fields of no more than 200.
Moving to Vero, Branigan went on to win — and sponsor — the race that eventually became Vero’s best-known: the Sunrunners 10K.
“I’m a plugger,” jokes the senior Branigan. “I just try to stay in shape. The thrill for me has been watching the kids.”
Branigan has been nursing knee problems of late. Fortunately, he has a coach: his daughter-in-law Lotte is director of the physical therapy department at Vero Orthopedics, and a full-time therapist.
“I literally ran into that job,” she jokes.
In 2001, she and her husband were living with her in-laws, trying to save enough money to build a house, when her hours with another doctor were cut back.
“My father-in-law told me to go for a run and I’d feel better,” she recalls. “I was crossing the bridge when a group of runners was coming the other way.”
In that group was marathoner Dr. George Nichols, an orthopedic surgeon.
“Come work for me,” he said. In less than a month, she designed, equipped and helped staffed the new physical therapy clinic at Vero Orthopedics.
As for her own health, Lotte Branigan’s obstetrician, Dr. James Presley, has imposed few restrictions.
Old rules guiding maximum heart rates are no longer imposed, and while she has to be careful not to get overheated, the only other limit to her runs is whether her baby has gotten cozy atop her bladder.
Presley did have one other admonition: “You can ride your bike, but don’t crash,” he said.
Lotte Branigan had that warning in mind when at 17 weeks pregnant she opted out of a tough ride with Eddie and a gang of aggressive riders in Melbourne, and instead stayed home to ride with her father-in-law and a friend.
Positioning herself in a line between the two – though she prefers to ride two abreast to see the road, her wheel hit something on the pavement and she went down, skidding on her left side along the pavement.
The baby was fine, but Lotte was badly scraped in what cyclists call “road rash.”
At her next check-up, the road rash did not go unnoticed. “Dr. Presley asked me if I had psoriasis,” says Lotte Branigan with a laugh.
“When I told him I crashed, he said with his dry humor, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to do that?’ “
These days, she is the first person awake in the house, out the door for a 7-mile run before either her son or husband are up.
Eddie Branigan, on the other hand, is a night-owl.
After spending his days working on the business side of his dad’s clinic, he comes home to visit with family, and then heads out for moonlight runs at 11 p.m. or later.
By then, back in his parents’ home on the island, Christina Branigan is just getting to the laundry, after watching Edward all day, going to her dancing class, grabbing something for dinner, then heading to her husband’s office to catch up on bookwork in the evenings.
Married 42 years, Christina Branigan, 63, met her husband in high school on Long Island.
They moved to Vero in 1977 after Ed Branigan, then an Air Force flight surgeon at Patrick Air Force Base, helped out at the emergency room here.
He set up an eye clinic first on Beachland Boulevard, then on Royal Palm Pointe.
Eddie Branigan ran track for Vero Beach High School (his sister Tracey lives in Tampa with a 17-year-old son, Evan.)
He was home for a break from University of Central Florida when he met a scholarship swimmer from Denmark named Lotte, who was spending a year abroad swimming for Indian River Community College’s stand-out swim team.
“Three weeks before my parents were coming from Denmark to get me, I met Eddie,” Lotte Branigan says. It was 1994.
With Eddie’s influence, Lotte Branigan intensified her training in running and cycling. He couldn’t have known just what a triple-threat she would become.
The day after the wedding, she beat him in a race.
“He had a badly injured foot,” she says. But she does seem to relish the memory. “He saw me right at his feet as he got out of the pool, and turned around and said, ‘Oh, sh-t!’ “
In 1995, the couple returned to Denmark where Lotte Branigan earned a degree in physical therapy, and Eddie Branigan sold a line of high-end racing bikes, competing in races around Europe.
Returning to the states, both continued to compete. After a decade of serious wins, Lotte Branigan was more than ready to slow down when Edward was born.
Not that she wasted any time at the hospital.
“I was 10 centimeters when I got there,” she recalls. “Eddie would race me down the hallway in the wheelchair before I had to stop and stand for the next contraction, then he’d race me off again.”
Within a week of Edward’s birth, she was on the elliptical machine.
At the six-week mark, she hit the ground running – literally. She and her husband headed out for Vero’s Sunrunners 10K.
“It was the most pitiful race we’ve ever run,” she says, rolling her eyes and laughing.
Going back to work was equally tough. But the transition was eased tremendously by her mother-in-law’s willingness to watch the baby from the start.
Christina Branigan, who says raising her own kids was “the happiest time of our lives,” says helping care for Edward now just brightens her day.
Last weekend, while toys decorated the living room of their riverfront barrier island home, the dining room was set with silver-wrapped party favors for Lotte Branigan’s baby shower.
“This is my youth revolving and recycling,” Christina Branigan says. “It’s the most heartwarming thing you could ever imagine, and now having a little granddaughter. I can tell you right now: she’s going to be one spoiled little girl.”
