Five local women finish triathlon

The waters of Lake Utah resembled glass bending to 3-foot swells as 40 mph winds kicked water into the air. Kathy Black and Kelly Denizo stood on the lake’s bank, strapping on their swim goggles

Just before they started the 2002 Utah Ironman, Black said to Denzio, “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

At 6:55 a.m., five minutes before the triathlon was scheduled to start, they heard a boom and jumped into the water.

Black couldn’t see anyone, so she started to swim toward the only thing she could see — boats. There were no kayakers, no buoys and no lifeguards. An hour and a half passed and Black swam toward the side of the lake, eventually reaching land.

A guy in a pick-up truck pleaded with Black to get into the truck. Black said, “No, I’m doing an Ironman; I’ll get disqualified.” But when she found out race had been postponed for five hours, she took the ride. She restarted the race later, but Denzio decided not to.

“I swore off all Ironmans in 2002,” Black said.

Then, in December 2009, Black received a phone call from Lori Byrd. She told her to pour herself a glass of wine, because she wanted to talk to her about something. That’s when Byrd said that she and a group of their friends were planning to sign up for the Ironman in Louisville.

“You guys don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Black had said. “You’re going to kill yourself; I have to do it with you.”

The two women laugh about the way Byrd broached the subject and the domino effect that took place afterward when fellow Winter Parkers Denzio, Kristen Schwieger and Page Ritter-Soule and Belinda Linhardt of Ocoee all signed up for the race.

Eight years later, Black broke her pact from 2002 by completing the Louisville Ironman on Sunday, Aug. 29. All six women finished. But besides exercising for 11 to 16 hours straight, the women accomplished something else through the Ironman — they formed a unique blend of friendship and support group for one another during the rigorous nine months of training.

“It’s [the training process is] like being pregnant,” Schwieger said.

During one of their five-hour bike rides, Denzio remembers her leg throbbing, and she started to cry, telling the others to go on without her.

“Kathy made me finish the rest of the workout to where I was in literally in tears,” Denzio said. “She told me that’s what you have to do in an Ironman, because mentally you have to work thorough it.”

All six women agreed that juggling their 20-hour training with their daily lives of working full time, being a wife and being a mother was a challenge.

Schwieger accomplishes this by working out before her family gets up in the morning.

“I try to take them to school everyday, and I try not to let them know outside of weekends that I’ve been gone,” she said.

Both men and women participate in the Ironman but athletes are split into age and gender groups.

“I think women are actually mentally stronger than men,” Denzio said. “I know for myself after having my daughter, I am way more mentally strong than I used to be.”

Jeff Cuddeack, who coached Black, Linhardt and Schwieger, said women are naturally better in endurance races than men.

“As the distance of the race gets larger, the relative distance between the male and the female decreases,” Cuddeack said. “I think women represent about 40 percent of the (triathlon) field.”

For Schwieger, the driving factor behind this race represents two things: it’s something the six of them did together, and it is a dedication to her deceased grandmother who passed away in January.

“They put the phone up to her ear right before she passed, and she said, ‘Ironman’,” Schwieger said. “She was just one those Grandmothers that just bragged too much so that is why it was on the forefront of her mind.”

The six women aren’t planning to stop at the Louisville Ironman. The next stop for them is a half Ironman: Ironman 70.3 in Augusta on Sept. 26.

How they did

The Ironman triathlon consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 42-mile run.

Here are their finishing times:

Kristen Schwieger 11:14:29;

Kelly Denzio 13:15:55;

Kathy Black 14:16:49;

Lori Byrd 14:15:57;

Belinda Linhardt 15:44:40;

Page Ritter-Soule 15:44:44