Assoc. Prof makes Ironman World Championship, raises funds to fight pancreatic cancer

Associate Professor Maria Simone doesn’t just pump iron, she runs it, bikes it and swims it.

Simone, who will compete in her first Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, Oct. 11, will notch her eighth grueling Ironman competition, her third this year alone.

She qualified for the Championship with her Ironman race Aug. 24 in Louisville, Ky. where she was the 28th fastest female and placed 190 overall out of more than 2,000 athletes. Competing in separate male and female divisions, racers are also divvied up by age group.

“It was a sufferfest,” recalled Simone, 40, of Absecon. “It was 100 degrees, 80 percent humidity. It was horrible.”

Finishing one Ironman race, let alone eight, takes staggering commitment. Participants swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles – a full marathon – more.

Some 2,000 men and women will compete for the World Championship, a race Simone almost didn’t make.

A blogger about training and competing, she wrote on her Running a life web site that she almost put off her dream of the Championship after missing a slot by just 90 seconds in an Ironman race in June.

 “As of now, I am done with Kona for a year,” she wrote following a race in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. “(Trying to get there is) just not fun right now.”

That didn’t last long. Within weeks of her crushing disappointment in Idaho, a miss she painfully detailed online, she was registered for Louisville and going for the Championship.

Simone, who teaches in Rowan’s New Media Concentration within the College of Communication & Creative Arts, researches communication and sports, specifically perceptions about women triathletes.

Having previously used her Ironman competitions as a platform to raise money for Rowan’s EOF/MAP program, which supports students from low-income homes, Simone this year is using it to raise money for pancreatic cancer research.

After losing her mother at just 69 to the disease in 2012, Simone combined her passion for competition with a desire to help stop the terminal illness.

“When we have an opportunity to take something we are doing and make it a force for good in the community, I believe we should,” she said.

She set a fundraising goal of $5,000 but increased it to $7,500 after getting some $3,500 in pledges the first week. Donations, which may be through her web site, support the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Simone, who will be joined in Kona by her husband John Jenkins, a fellow Ironman competitor who qualified for the men’s championship race, said donor response to her fundraising has pushed her even harder.

“Most people will not compete in an Ironman race, let alone a World Championship, but by making a small pledge in support of this research they pay tribute to people we’ve lost,” she said.

Training for the Championship every day, Simone said regardless of the outcome in Kona the sport has transformed her and greatly informs her role in the classroom.

“It’s given me the personal experience to challenge my students, to push them to do things they don’t think they can do,” she said. “I’m not saying that thing you want won’t take great sacrifice but you can make it happen.”