TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS: Cancer survivors prepare for annual triathlon

MARK PATTON, NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER

Julie Main is a two-time cancer survivor and will be biking as part of a three-person relay team in the Santa Barbara Triathlon. ANA ELISA FUENTES/NEWS-PRESS

Christine Feldman has overcome two breast cancers, pneumonia and a burst appendix. COURTESY PHOTO

Genevieve Antonow fought off breast cancer this year. RAFAEL MALDONADO/NEWS-PRESS

Christine Feldman signed up for her first triathlon this year even after being diagnosed with pneumonia. COURTESY PHOTO

They are not your typical triathletes. But they are most certainly the Ironwomen of Santa Barbara.

Genevieve Antonow didn't take up the sport until she turned 62 this year and was on the mend from breast cancer.

Julie Main, who has waged her own long battles against breast cancer, responded to news of a new spinal tumor by running a marathon.

And then there's 38-year-old Christine Feldman, who has dealt with so much adversity the past five years -- two breast cancers, pneumonia and even a burst appendix -- that she considers her health to be "absolutely comical."

"After you go through all of that," she said, "doing a triathlon is just a piece of cake."

They are all entered in this week's 25th annual Santa Barbara Triathlon. Main will ride the 34-mile cycle leg for a Santa Barbara Cancer Center relay team in Saturday's long-course race. Antonow and Feldman will both attempt their first triathlons when they compete in Sunday's sprint-course race.

The cause is near to their hearts: The triathlon will benefit the Patient Wellness Program at the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara, and they are all beneficiaries of its services.

"It's hard to describe how excited it makes me feel to do something that has a real healthy aspect to it," Feldman said. "You have to eat right, train right, do the right things -- and that helps you get back on the right track."

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Antonow never would have imagined attempting a triathlon two years ago while recovering from her second surgery.

"I would've thought it impossible . . . out of the question," she said. "When you're diagnosed with something like this, you become more fragile mentally. But I think you have to rebuild that strength.

"This has been a very positive experience for me because it helps you conquer your fears. It's really a metaphor for life."

Antonow and Feldman were both directed by the Wellness Program toward Momentum 4 Life, a triathlon training group headed by Dawn Schroeder.

"I wanted to do one many years ago and never got around to it," Antonow said. "There would be a marathon or a triathlon on TV and I'd get such a rush from just watching it. But it's something I never thought I'd get to do.

"This has been such a surprise for me. Dawn has been so wonderful and committed and very attentive to everyone and to all stages of the program. I don't think I could've done it without that. I really needed the support."

She had been swimming with the Masters Program at Los Ba0x96os del Mar Pool for more than four years, but admitted that charging into the ocean provided "quite another challenge."

But it didn't take long for Antonow's apprehension to melt away.

"There's a woman in the group who's paralyzed from the waist down, and she's doing this training for the second time," she said. "When I saw her get out of her wheelchair and get into the water, that's when I decided that I wouldn't complain anymore."

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A triathlon didn't seem possible for Feldman -- not after 12 surgeries on one side of her body.

"It left me without full function of one of my arms, so swimming was a pretty big feat for me," she said. "I don't have any lymph nodes on that side of my body. A trainer at my gym told me that I'd never even be able to do a pushup again."

But she pushed herself during her summer training as though her life depended upon it and regained the strength in her arm.

"I could swim only two laps freestyle when I first went out there," Feldman said. "Today I swam 30 laps, and I went mountain biking this afternoon. I feel like I'm a totally new person."

She signed up for her first triathlon this year even while being diagnosed with pneumonia -- a condition that she figures was brought on by her radiation treatments. She's now taking drugs to deal with both that illness and her cancer.

"I'm a pharmaceutical company's dream," Feldman said with a laugh.

She credits her resilience to the positive atmosphere that surrounds her Momentum 4 Life training group.

"I like the social aspect, to be with all these people who are doing something healthy, and who are always encouraging you," Feldman said. "It's great to be biking, and on the flip-around see everyone coming back at you smiling.

"I owe Dawn Schroeder a lot. She's just an incredible person to be able to put this together and help so many people. I wish everybody could understand what something like this can mean to a person."

Nobody understands it better that her two children -- Grant, age 7, and 6-year-old Scott.

"I've been sick for the last five years of my life -- on the couch, tired, bald, bursted and drugged," she said. "You name it, and my kids have seen me that way. But when my older son saw me coming down the Nite Moves course, he told me, 'Hey, Mom! You're so awesome!'

"He had always seen me as the cancer victim, but now he was seeing me as healthy. They both get so excited now when I put all my Momentum gear on."

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The long course is an appropriate race for Main, who's been waging a war against breast cancer since 1993. She entered the first Terry Fox Run that year, an event now called the Cancer Center Run and a memory that she laughingly calls "prehistoric."

"A cancer diagnosis tends to be a wakeup call to a person's lifestyle," Main said. "It gives them the oomph to want to get into shape."

She entered the first of three Santa Barbara Short-Course Triathlons in 2001 and has also raced twice in the Carpinteria Triathlon. But her biggest goal was to run a marathon by age 50. She just missed it.

"I had a new kind of cancer to deal with by then," Main said. Doctors found a sarcoma on her spine, and soon began attacking it with radiation. The Chicago Marathon would have to start without her.

But last June, soon after her 50th birthday, she did run in San Diego's Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. Even her oncologist, Dr. Lindsay Blount, wondered if she could handle it.

"He's an active cyclist and a cancer survivor himself, and he asked me, 'Are you sure you still want to do this marathon?' " Main said. "I told him, 'You're not stopping me from doing this one.' Everyone tried to talk me out of it. And yes, it was really hard, and I did get really fatigued.

"But I kept telling myself, 'Just finish . . . Just finish . . . Just finish.' It was my mantra."

She got a burst of excitement when she reached her husband Michael, who was waiting at the two-mile mark. But when she spotted a sign that read "Half a mile to go," she could no longer hold back. She cried all the way to the finish line.

Main had previously served on the Cancer Center's Board of Trustees and was on the interview committee in 1999 when Christine Pickett was hired as the first manager of the Wellness Program. Two years later, they competed together in their first triathlon.

"Julie is one of the most amazing people that I know," Pickett said. "She inspires people without even knowing it. She refuses to be anything but a survivor, and it's very motivating to be around her."

The thought of a full triathlon so soon after a marathon, however, didn't exactly appeal to Main: "I was so burned out on running," she admitted.

But Pickett came up with the idea of a Cancer Center relay team. Main agreed to do the 34-mile bike ride -- and Rick Scott, president of the Cancer Center, took the 10K-run anchor leg. That left Pickett with the one-mile swim.

"I said, 'Hey, wait a minute . . . Who's idea was this anyway?' " she said with a laugh. "Julie says she's doing this to have fun. I said, 'Tell me how much fun this is going to be when I have kelp around my ankles and have swallowed a gallon of salt water.' "

Their registered team name is "Are We Done Yet?"

Main has the answer to that one: She's definitely not done. Not by a long way.

e-mail: mpatton@newspress.com