I'm excited to be back with the team for another year and am looking forward to a great season. So here's a little bit about me.
My first exposure to sports was skiing in Austria. On my first day of ski class I was introduced to the rope tow. On my second time up the rope tow, the tip of my ski caught in the snow, pulling my ski, boot, and leg right off. I continued on up the mountain on one leg, unfazed by the incident. My instructor was a little less calm when she saw my boot and "leg" laying in the snow halfway up the mountain. No one had told her I was an amputee. After that, my parents figured I should probably take up a different sport!
So my first serious sport was disabled track, which I started back in 1998. At about 100 pounds, I was far from having the sprinter body-type, but since the only events were the 100m and 200m I trained for them anyways. I ran track at the elite (Paralympic) level for about 4 years. Holding the 200m and 800m world records in my disability classification for a brief time was good enough for me. With so many muscle strains, shin splints, and stress fractures, I was a walking (or hobbling) sports medicine disaster. It was time to retire.
Luckily for me, that was about the time triathlons were gaining popularity and there were a couple of short ones near my home in Florida. I did my first triathlon on my mom's hybrid cruiser in a two- piece bathing suit and running shorts. That was 6 years ago.
I then bought my first triathlon bike, a yellow Cervelo One, at Inside Out Sports in 2003. Since then I've done every distance. I've raced at 3 World Championships (2005 Honolulu – silver medalist, 2006 Switzerland – silver medalist, 2008 Vancouver – gold medalist) and finished 3 Ironmans (2007 Arizona – 13:56, 2007 Kona – 14:02, 2008 Beach2Battleship – 12:29).
This year I plan on working on getting faster and stronger. So if you see a girl running with a black carbon fiber leg either around Duke Forest or along the tobacco trail in Durham, it's probably me. Say hi. Can't wait to see you all out there on the roads!
Although you'd never guess it from her times, Kelly is a below-knee amputee who races against able-bodied athletes at every chance she gets. We are thrilled to have Kelly and even more thrilled to see somebody so intensely committed and inspirational join the ranks of the TMS-IOS Team. Try telling her there's something she CAN'T do and she'll show you she can. Favorite team stories about Kelly include the year she did the Uwharrie Mountain 8 mile run and blew the bolts off her prosthetic leg. She challenged her treatment team to make a leg with better shock absorption and to make a leg that could keep up with HER!
