Snyders don’t get tired they get strong

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

Two loops around Mirror Lake, 112-mile bike race, and a 26.2-mile run make up the annual Lake Placid Ironman triathlon. The race will be celebrating its 20th anniversary on July 22, but for Groton resident Shana Snyder it will be her first full Ironman. Since early January Snyder has been specifically training for this race. Biking for four hours each weekend and running and swimming almost daily has become almost her entire life. It became a now or never kind of thing, so she chose now.

Snyder didn’t start this journey on a whim. She’s been active her entire life and has been running, biking, and swimming as separate activities for years. About five years ago someone suggested she combine them all and join the Tri for the Y race hosted by the YMCA of Ithaca and Tompkins County. She was hooked.

“I remember sitting there at the start, I just had doubts and fears,” Snyder said. “I just had a blast. I loved every minute of it. That was my intro to triathlons.”

Since then she has completed several half Ironman races until she felt ready for the full thing. This is the year. But she couldn’t do it alone. As a mom of two young children, ages 8 and 6, Snyder couldn’t have gotten in the necessary training if it weren’t for the available child care at the Ithaca YMCA. Each week consists of at least three swim sessions, three or four runs, and three or four bike rides.

“I had doubts, thinking ‘Am I going to be able to put in the training?’ and things like that,” Snyder said. “But, we make it work, and the Ithaca Y really enables me to do that.”

Her kids love it. While she swims her laps, they get to play in the kiddie-pool until it’s time to jump on the bike, then they head to the drop-in child care center. It’s her number one reason for choosing the Ithaca YMCA as her main training center. Her husband, one of her biggest cheerleaders in this effort, is a chef at Cornell who works nights and weekends so juggling the kids wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Ithaca YMCA drop-in child care.

The Ironman is something Snyder needs to do for herself. But, she also sees it as an opportunity to show her own children, and the kids she teaches at Alton B. Parker Elementary in Cortland, that they can do anything they set their minds to. She wants to model healthy behaviors for the cubs in her cub scout pack. She wants fellow moms to know that having kids doesn’t have to stop them from pursuing an ambitious goal. In their house, Snyders don’t get tired, Snyders get strong. For Snyder, that strength isn’t just physical.

“I do it, number one, for the mental aspect,” Snyder said of her active lifestyle. “I feel I need that. My family has had some issues with mental illness and I think that this is a great way to combat that in my own life. I’ve seen other family members do the same with great success.”

 

At the race in July Snyder will be racing with her sister, a six-time Ironman competitor. One of the reasons she chose to compete in the Lake Placid race as her first full Ironman is because of the supportive community of the racers. It’s not about competing against each other, it’s about competing with who you were yesterday.
“I just want to finish,” Snyder said of her goal for this race. “I think anytime you try something like this for the first time at this magnitude I think that’s a good goal, just to finish. If I can feel good, that would be a plus, but I probably won’t.”

Racers of the triathlon must reach certain parts of the course in a set time or they are pulled off the course. For Snyder, the part she’s most worried about is the biking, despite the fact that she’s done a lot of biking in her life. Before they were married, she and her husband took a bike tour across the United States. But, biking for fun and biking for speed are very different things. The race rules also dictate that racers are not allowed to accept help from anyone or they will be disqualified.
“You’ve got to be able to handle mechanical issues that come up with your bike and some I know how to fix and some I don’t,” she said. “My husband will be there cheering me on but if he hands me something to help me I’m disqualified.”

Her students are aware of her training, Snyder said, but don’t fully understand what competing in the Ironman really means. They see her riding her bike into work from Groton each day, and they know that she has a big race coming up, but trying to describe to elementary-aged students that the “race” doesn’t really have a winner hasn’t yet set in. But what she’s hoping her students, and her kids, understand is that biking from Groton to Cortland is possible. It can be done if you try.
Because she’s been so open about her training for the Ironman, Snyder said she expects a lot of people to be asking her how she did when July 23 rolls around.
“I really hope I finish and if I don’t – and I’ll have a lot of people asking me how it went – and I think that’s ok,” she said. “If I don’t, I think I’ll just gear up and try again. I want them to know that I’m not going to give up. It’s just something that I really want. The things that you can be most proud of in life are the things that don’t come easy.”

After the race, she’s not sure what she’ll do with all her extra time. Maybe the family will take a bike tour, maybe she’ll train for a marathon, maybe she’ll just binge Netflix for a few weeks. But those are concerns for later. Right now, it’s just about finishing her greatest challenge yet.