Women achieve a dream, one drop of sweat at a time

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The daily sports section is looking bleak these days. The Mariners on a slide. The Sonics are about to be transplanted to Oklahoma. Jamie Moyer got traded. The Everett Aquasox are in the last place in their division.

But what the sports section misses are events that have more participants than spectators. And these are what sport is all about: not watching someone else score some points, but going out and challenging yourself.

On Sunday, 4,000 women did just that in the annual Danskin Triathlon. Triathlons combine swimming, bicycling and running. On early Sunday morning, just after the sun rose, my son and I watched the first women jump into Lake Washington for a half-mile swim. When they made it back to shore, they ran to the transition zone, put on their bicycling helmets, and took off on a 12-mile ride to Mercer Island and back. Then they switched to running shoes for a three-mile run.

Among the top athletes were Katie Ludwig of Lakewood in the 20-24 age group, Hillary Stibbard-Terrell of Kenmore in the 45-49 age group; Maria Nelson of Kent in the 50-54 age group (she beat my wife!); Patricia Buchanan of Langley in the 55-59 age group; and Judy Fisher of Auburn, who won the 60-64 age group with a time of one hour, 29 minutes. Carol Ann Hanford from Lacey won the 70-year-plus category in just over two hours.

The Danskin triathlon is much less about elite athletes and much more about women who set a goal for themselves that they might have thought impossible a few years ago. To meet that goal, of finishing the triathlon, they had to start training months and sometimes years before race day.

As I watched my wife and friends race, I was amazed by how mixed these women were – not the typical race with the buff elites holding sway, but instead tall, short, skinny, rotund, old, middle-aged and young. One group had formed a team several years ago to encourage African-American women to participate in the triathlon, and these women – Soul Sistas – were well represented. Another group of women from the University Unitarian Church swam, biked and ran remembering their teammate who is in intensive care recovering from last month’s horrendous shooting at the Jewish Federation.

Most of these women don’t have the time to get in shape and train up for the triathlon; they are working, taking care of their kids, volunteering in their PTAs. But they find that time anyway. And they summon their will not just for the big day of the triathlon, but for every training session they go on, whether that’s running, bicycling or swimming. It is a living metaphor for lives well-lived; instead of waiting for someone or something to do something to you, you decide that you are going to do something for yourself.

Many of them have had a long journey. More than 200 of the athletes were breast cancer survivors. The connection is strong; the proceeds from the race support research on breast cancer. And a lot of other survivor-winners participated. One friend of mine had a brain tumor removed four years ago. She had a long, difficult and successful recovery. So when a colleague suggested the idea of participating in the triathlon, she didn’t hesitate, even though she couldn’t swim. Over the past four months, she has learned to swim, and on Sunday, she swam and rode and ran her way to her own personal victory.

The Danskin triathlon puts a different light on who we are. Women realize that they can do something they hadn’t even dreamed about. And while they do much of it alone, with personal commitment and discipline, they also do much of it together, forming teams, making sure athletes have training partners and swimming buddies, pulling everyone along to make it to the start of the triathlon and make it to the finish. The enthusiasm, group spirit and we-are-all-in-this-together culture was wonderful.

Sure, this was a competition. But it was also an event of challenge, hope, love and promise. It was an event for our future.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.