Kevin Riordan: Rowan professor out to finish triathlon

After her second fall in as many weeks of Ironman bike training, Maria Simone could hear the Voices.

You can't do this. There's no way. Just quit!

Fortunately, the Rowan University associate professor - who is blogging and raising scholarship money as she prepares - listened to her husband instead.

"He told me to be an Ironman," Simone, 36, recalls. "And something about that got in my head. I got back on the bike, and we finished the ride."

Simone and her husband, John Jenkins, 37, live in Absecon and are training for the July 25 Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid, N.Y. It's one of 24 qualifying races worldwide for the Big Kahuna - the Oct. 9 Ironman in Hawaii, where the first of these extreme endurance competitions was held in 1978.

That's extreme endurance as in a 2.4-mile swim followed by a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. Just writing that exhausted me. No wonder Simone and Jenkins hear the Voices occasionally during their seven-days-a-week sessions.

"You just don't listen to them," says Jenkins, a plumbing inspector who, like his wife, practically glows with vitality.

The couple, who've known each other since they were 12 and have been married for a decade, got the idea to enter Ironman from Eric Schrading, their spinning instructor at Tilton Fitness in Galloway Township.

"We ran a 50K - 31 miles - on Jan. 2, and that kind of kicked off the 30-week training period," Simone says.

The Philadelphia native - who grew up in Brigantine and, like her husband, is a graduate of Holy Spirit High School in Absecon - blogs at www.runningalife.com

"Learning about life while pushing the limits of the body" is the theme, and Simone writes eloquently about how success depends on consistent, incremental actions.

In other words, hard work.

"Things can seem insurmountable. Ironman seems insurmountable," she says. "But what I've learned is: Take little steps, and have little goals."

Simone earned her doctorate in communications from Temple University and sees parallels between "academic endurance," in her words, and physical endurance.

"You're in your sophomore or junior year and you start to question. 'Do I want to do this? Can I even do this? Is this even possible?' You have moments when you feel stuck.

"But do it anyway. That's academic endurance. You don't feel like staying up to write a paper? Do it anyway."

Simone teaches communications studies and directs the public-speaking program at Rowan, and hopes to raise $5,000 to help students there with the cost of books. She's about halfway to her goal, with most of the donations to the Iron Scholarship Fund so far from family, friends, and her blog.

She was inspired by having worked her way through Richard Stockton College of New Jersey as a newspaper reporter, juggling deadlines and term papers.

"I'm certainly not going to raise enough money to keep someone from having to work," Simone says. "But if I can pay for books, I might make one year a little bit easier."

She is looking forward to crossing the finish line at Lake Placid.

"It will mean that I made it, you know? That I did something that, even as little as a year ago, I said I wouldn't do or couldn't do.

"I have learned so much about life from doing this: Don't quit. Don't quit.

"I don't quit."