NewsChilders Is Off To Kona
Matthew Dale profiles lottery winner Jill Childers
Published Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Jill Childers was cycling with a friend and a person she didn't know. The stranger came recommended by another friend. The threesome was descending a hill on a busy San Diego road, Childers and her friend up front, the stranger trailing behind. There's a riding stable on one side of the road, a rural-like setting on the other where mountain bikers, joggers and hikers can run and ride for miles. Motorists easily can hit speeds of 60 mph on Black Mountain Road.
The cyclists were approaching some construction in the street. Childers and her friend slowed down. Jill remembers putting her hand down, warning the trailing cyclist, the stranger, to slow.
Childers suffered a broken jaw and broken collarbone.
Two days later, her head feeling like somebody was beating it with a hammer, Childers went back to the hospital. “It throbbed so bad,” she said. A CT scan showed she had suffered bleeding on the brain. Jill would not ride a bike again for two years. The accident, in August 2003, came five weeks before Childers was scheduled to make her 140.6-mile debut at Ford Ironman Wisconsin.
“Emotionally,” said Childers’ husband, Chris, “she was crushed.”
The accident, if not a distant memory, is certainly fading. Childers substituted long runs for her cycling mileage. She became an ultramarathon runner and now has completed five 50-milers and five 50-kilometer races.In her heart, though, she longed to knock off an Ironman. So much so that on the day of her accident she had a friend sign her up for at Coeur d’Alene. Last January, without Chris’ knowledge, Jill entered the Ford Ironman World Championship lottery.
Days before the winners were posted on Ironman.com, a reporter phoned Childers and gave her the good news. Out of more than 6,500 entrants, Childers was one of the 150 U.S. winners.
“No way, no waaaay,” said Childers, virtually screaming into the phone. “Oh my gosh. Oh my God, I want to cry.”
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Childers’ lottery yarn is a fascinating one beyond her bicycle crash. She’s 42 years old and swears that at 35 she had never run a mile. Not in high school P.E. Not for fun. Not anytime.
At 35, she spread 150 pounds across her 5-foot-6 frame, wore a size 12 and didn’t feel good about herself.
“I felt old for my age,” said Childers, a business manager for an engineering/transportation company.
Remarkably disciplined, Childers lost 20 pounds in a
month by strictly dieting. She knew she couldn’t maintain the low-fat diet and asked her husband, “I want to keep the weight off, but I can’t eat like this. What do I do?”Chris, who isn’t exactly a fitness fanatic, told her, “Walk around the block.”
Jill huffed and puffed around the block.
Three months later she walked and jogged a 5K. Nine months later she ran a 2:11 half marathon. Three months after that came a sprint triathlon.
The transformation was now tumbling along like water rushing downstream. In 2002, about two-and-a-half years after she headed out the front door to walk around the block, Childers knocked off an Ironman 70.3.
Then came the bike accident. Ironically, the cyclist who hit Childers from behind was also a Ford Ironman World Championship lottery recipient, barely two months before his trip to the Big Island.
The day of Childers’ accident, medical personnel initially sent her home with a broken collarbone and Vicodin, saying she hadn’t suffered a head injury. Looking at his wife’s cracked helmet, Chris wasn’t convinced. A day later Jill couldn’t read the words on a get-well card.
Chris brought her back to the hospital. The CT scan showed bleeding on the brain. It took her months to recover. She couldn’t remember neighbors’ names for weeks. She’d wander down the fruits and vegetables aisles at the market and might call a banana a pickle.
“After I couldn’t remember family members’ name,” said Childers, “it wasn’t funny anymore.”
Gradually, Childers recovered, but Chris told his wife he didn’t want her cycling.
“I felt she hated me the first couple months,” Chris said. “I felt almost like a parent telling a kid they couldn’t do something. I think she felt like she was being treated like a child who was grounded. It was, without a doubt, the hardest part of our marriage.”Said Jill, “It was difficult. We got past it.”
While Chris isn’t a hard-core runner, cyclist or swimmer, he does have one passion – motorcycles. When Chris finally put the magazines down and bought a bike, a friend of Jill’s asked him if it wasn’t hypocritical that he could ride a motorcycle but that he wouldn’t let her ride a bike.
“I think I reached a point where she seemed OK (mentally and physically after the bike crash),” Chris said. “I came to the conclusion it’s in God’s hands. You could slip in a tub or fall on a motorcycle or bike.”
Last August, at Barb’s Race in Northern California’s Sonoma County wine country, Childers finally crossed off the Ironman, completing the race in 14 hours, 5 minutes, 49 seconds.
She cycles again but with strict rules.
No group rides. A party of three is the largest she’ll ride with. She won’t ride with strangers.
“If somebody’s close to me I don’t know, I tell him or her to get away from me,” Childers said. “I’m not afraid to get another cyclist on the road mad and tell ’em to back off.”
As for the 35-year-old woman who used to regularly dine on fast food, the woman who felt sluggish and depressed, that person’s long gone.
About once a week Childers leaves her house in the dark, straps on a headlamp and jogs 13 1/2 miles to work, then makes it a marathon day on the return home.
Now, her health willing, she’s bound for Kona.
“This is it,” Childers said. “This is sacred ground. This is Ironman Hawaii. There’s no other bigger event in triathlon that this.”
You can reach Matthew Dale at mdale@ironman.com
