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1:51PM Wednesday 03 December, 2008

Event leg-up for Maureen

22 August 2008

| By Grant Reynolds

There was only one way for Maureen Cummings to learn how to ride a bike: fast.

At the age of 27 Miss Cummings swung a well-trained leg over a bike frame and turned her biathlon career into a triathlon career.

“I learned to ride fast pretty quickly,” she said.

“I used to get out of the water never more than fourth, then drop to 30th or 40th on the bike, then run myself up into the top five.”

A relentless competitor, Miss Cummings travelled the country from the mid 1980s competing in events, reaching a peak as an elite triathlete in the mid 1990s.

In 2000 she took out the world championships for the 35 to 39 years age group, a monumental feat for someone who, for nearly two years, could barely walk.

Miss Cummings, a school teacher, had been treated with radiation for Plantar warts inside her foot, which resulted in swelling and pain so severe she could not wear a sock, let alone strap on a running shoe.

“I thought I wasn’t going to walk again. I couldn’t walk more than 10 metres,” she said.

This was a bitter pill to swallow for someone who had represented Australia at the Auckland Commonwealth Games in 1990.

“It’s not until your whole life is taken away that you can understand how people deal with blindness or being in a wheelchair,” she said.

“It was pretty horrible being told you’re going to end up in a wheelchair.”

Now, after a time away from the track, she’s using this Sunday’s Scody Noosa 10km run – part of the Noosa Half Marathon – as a build-up to re-enter the sport and hopefully reclaim her world title at the Gold Coast next year.

More than 3000 competitors are expected to line up for the event, which includes the Viridian Noosa Half Marathon, the Scody Noosa 10km run and the Beckmans Green Noosa 5km run walk.

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