Queen of the hill ...

Marti Shea, to use one of my brother Sean's quaint colloquialisms, is a "device." The Manchester, NH, native isn't just going strong at 47, she's shattering long-held notions of what women can do past their 40th birthdays. Now based in Marblehead, Mass., Shea is a personal trainer and strength coach, when she's not riding her bike straight up hills. I profiled Shea recently for the Boston Globe. That story can be found here. Below is the unabridged version.

Queen of the Hill
Former runner Marti Shea finds her niche in cycling

There was no way Marti Shea was missing the Allen Clark Memorial Time Trial in Vermont last Sunday. The Marblehead cyclist held a razor thin 3-point lead in the BUMPS Challenge (Bike Up the Mountain Point Series), even though she had defeated Kristen Gohr, the second place rider, in four races this summer. The BUMPS scoring system, said Shea, worked unfairly against her. That ticked her off, which was bad news for Gohr. The last thing any racer wants to do is have Shea angry.

"It's crazy. I've beaten her by three minutes up Mount Washington, 2½ minutes up Equinox, and 2½ minutes up Ascutney," said Shea before the series' penultimate race at Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, when she actually trailed Gohr in the standings. "The three times we've met head-to-head, I've crushed her. How can you beat someone three out of three times and still lose to them? I don't get it."

So Shea took matters into her own hands, winning at Mount Greylock in September, and then dominating the Allen Clark race up Vermont's Appalachian Gap. To put an exclamation mark on that win, she set a new course record of 26:46, shattering the old record (set by Gohr, coincidentally) by 80 seconds.

"I felt great," said Shea.

And, oh yeah, she's 47. The feisty, 5-foot-4 blonde who talks as fast as she rides simply crackles with energy. And she has a remarkable gift for denying gravity. Last year, she won the inaugural BUMPS Challenge, earning the moniker Queen of the Mountain. This past summer, she won both bike races up the Northeast's highest peak, the Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb in August, and Newton's Revenge in July. In between her Greylock and Allen Clark victories, she finished second in the Everest Challenge, which features more than 29,000 feet of climbing in two days of racing in California and Nevada.

"I'm bummed to say I took second place both days behind a 24-year-old pro rider," said Shea. "But I did give her a hard time on both days."

When it comes to competition, Shea is an undeniable force of nature. Want proof? Entering her second cycling stage race ever this past September, Shea convinced race organizers and USA Cycling officials to upgrade her license so she could race against the pro riders. She finished 11th overall, despite he fact that she had never raced a criterium, which was the final stage.

"It went out so freaking hard," said Shea of the crit. "I somehow managed to get on the end of it, for eight laps. All these girls are getting dropped all around me, and I'm telling myself, 'Don't give up, don't give up.'

"It wasn't the smoothest, but I finished with the leaders."

Shea has always been hyper-competitive, dating back to her days as a high school student at Manchester Memorial in New Hampshire. "Marti Shea? I played soccer against her," says MaryEllen Stergiou, who graduated from Manchester Central. "She was a beast."

Shea laughs when she hears Stergiou's comment. She was a five-sport athlete at Memorial – soccer and cross-country in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track and softball in the spring – until the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association adopted a one sport/one season rule. Shea's competitive gene, she said, comes from her father, William "Willy" Shea, who was a ball-hawking guard for St. Joseph's (now Trinity High) basketball team in Manchester.

"Willy was an outstanding guard," said William Pare, who now lives in Maryland. "The basketball coach at St. Joe's at the time was Doddie Healy, and when asked what an aspiring kid should do to learn how to play basketball, he'd simply say 'Watch Willy Shea.' Which was amazing, since Willy was very short for a guard."

At 5-foot-4, Shea's daughter is also small in stature, but with a big engine. A gifted all-around athlete, she concentrated on track "because I thought I'd get further with that." She was right, parlaying her high school accomplishments into an athletic scholarship at Boston University, where she ran the 3K, 5K and 10K, indoors and out, as well as cross-country. After earning her bachelor's degree in K-12 physical education, and a master's in education, Shea continued running as a sponsored athlete for Nike, while starting her own personal-training business, Select Fitness in Marblehead. She also participated in the 1988 Olympic trials, an eye-opening experience.

"There was really a lot of drug use, a lot of people making big teams doing stuff. And I didn't want to go down that route," said Shea. "I felt like I had reached my potential naturally, I wasn't going t get much faster. I was a high 32:50 10K runner. Back then, the Olympic time was about a 30:30. If I could have knock off another minute, that would have been phenomenal. Anything under 32 was exceptional. But that wasn't going to happen, not without doing something I didn't want to do."

Instead, Shea turned her focus to the marathon trails in 1992, but foot and knee problems became increasingly more chronic. "My dad told me a long time ago, you only have so many races in the tank. You can only go to the well so many times, and then you don't want to do it anymore," she said. "I remember him saying, 'You're going to grow up and you'll know when it's time to quit.' I felt like that in running. I remember doing a track workout, and thinking, I don't want to do this. Something just snapped."

So Shea hung up her running shoes, and got on with her life. "In all honesty, I felt like I needed a break from competing," she said. "I had been competing since I was 15. I just needed some time. I still loved running, but I was tired of having to push myself so hard. I missed sports. I wasn't doing anything else when I was running. So when I stopped, I took up windsurfing, snowboarding, mountain biking. I had a blast doing a bunch of other stuff."

It proved to be a real transitional period in Shea's life. She got divorced, entered into a new long-term relationship, and started putting more energy into her business. However, working as a personal trainer brought She into constant contact with athletes, and one started talking up the Mount Washington bike races. At the age of 44, with an arthritic right knee that prevented her from running, even for fun, Shea thought cycling was a good fit. Plus, she felt a spark again.

"Part of the reason I did it was to see, 'What can I do? Am I never going to be a great athlete anymore? Is this it? Is it over? I wanted to wee if I could still do it, still perform at a high level," she said. "It was really for fun. I love challenges. That's why Mount Washington became a goal. I wanted to show that I was still fit, that that I could still do it."

Sponsored by her husband Joe Tonon's Destination Cycling business, Shea entered the Mount Washington race in 2006, and came in third, with a time of 1:11:40, only three minutes off the winning mark. Last year, she finished second, and this year she won the women's category outright.

"I think I'm breaking some boundaries here. I feel like I'm really making a statement for older women, that it is possible for us to do these things," she said. "It's great. I'm totally intrigued by it, because I'm surprising myself. I believe in my heart that I can compete against these younger girls, but it's one thing to say it, an it's another thing to prove it."

Once again, as she did in high school and college, Shea is letting her results do the talking. She won the very first stage race she ever entered – the Killington Stage Race in Vermont last May – and now has two BUMPS titles on her resume. With the help of sponsors such as Cervelo bicycles, Laser helmets and Fit Werx of Peabody, Shea plans to take her talents to the road-racing arena next year, and will compete in several major stage races, including the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico and Cascade Cycling Classic in Oregon.

"To me, it's like a second chance. This is the twilight of my career," she said. "I have no idea how long I can compete at this level. I'm definitely making a commitment for two years. If I still have the ability to compete against young girls who are 25, 26, I'll keep going. I'll keep going as long as I can."

Her experience at the Everest Challenge, where she finished second to 24-year-old Kathryn Donovan, was both a wake-up call, and an inspiration. "She is the real deal," said Shea. "She came in 10th overall in the Gila and Cascade, so that tells me the work I have cut out for myself to raise the performance bar over the next eight months."

Given her track record, it wouldn't be wise to bet against Marti Shea. "I'm a wicked tough competitor. I love to win, I hate to lose," she said. "But I also love the process of getting to that goal as much as attaining that goal."

FINIS