Local triathlete continues to dominate

A local grandmother of five continues to win every competition she enters on the national and world stage.

Jan Miller, 70, has finished second only once along her remarkable competitive career path as a world-class triathlete.

The retired Seattle high school math teacher always thought she would pursue classical piano as a child. However, raising three kids and a love of math took her down those roads until husband Bob Miller, a 1956 Olympic pentathlete and nationally known swimming coach, discovered she was an even better runner than she was a swimmer.

Already a consistent top-three finisher in her early thirties at national tournaments in the Masters Swim program she started herself, he found when she ran with him that she was doing a pretty good job of keeping up.

Living in Florida in the early 80s, she was busy coaching young swimmers while Bob was experimenting with the latest competitive craze — the triathlon — bugging her to give it a try.

“Bob, I don’t even own a bike,” she answered, but after they moved back to Washington, her fellow swimmers continued to encourage her for years, so she finally decided to enter the Blue Lake Triathlon in 1999.

“I bought a bike on a Thursday and the race was on Saturday,” she recalled.

“I thought, ‘All I have to do is make sure I don’t fall off.’”

She won it.

When they retired to Dove Mountain the following year, she continued to run and swim. To keep from getting bored, she says, she began biking up the hills north of Tucson, and in 2001 broke the record in the 60-64 age group in the Tucson sprint triathlon.

By 2002, she was entering at Olympic distances (one-mile swim/25-mile bike/6.2-mile run) and winning consistently.

A first-place finish in Oceanside, California in 2003 earned a coveted spot in the famous Kona Iron Man, but she turned it down.

“Bob didn’t think I was ready for it,” she said, but it’s very possible he underestimated his wife’s talent and determination.

A winning streak

Taking the world championships in Queenstown, New Zealand in 2003, plus the nationals, she followed that with victories in 2004 in the nationals and another world title well earned in Portugal.

“That was the hardest bike ride,” she remembers. “People were picking their bikes up and carrying them up the hills.”

Those triumphs spurred her to work toward her first half iron man (1.2-mile swim/56-mile bike/13.1-mile run), which she won, of course.

With another first in the 2005 World Olympic Distance Triathlon in Hawaii at age 67, she entered the famous Kona Iron Man only six days later, winning on her first try at 13:54.24, toppling the record set for her age group by the renowned Madonna Buder, the oldest woman to ever do the Iron Man.

“I felt like a million when I crossed the finish line,” Miller said, as she described the demanding three-mile ocean swim, 100-mile bike trek, followed by a full marathon (26.2 mile run), battling white caps and banging arms and legs, potential hypothermia and bike falls, and the constant pressure to push yourself beyond the limit of your endurance.

Miller returned in 2006 to try to break her own record, and was on pace to do it, but seasickness in the rough water forced her out of the final marathon leg and she never went back, although Buder, who still communicates with her regularly, has been pressuring her to try it one more time.

She continues to compete in bike races and Masters swim tournaments along with the other talented Green Valley teammates she coaches, where she consistently finishes among frontrunners in national events, predictably best in the distances.

She won three Arizona road races in Flagstaff recently, as well as several other long distance bike competitions, including national road races, and last year set a record in the steep ten-mile Mt. Graham climb.

“My grandson Jon-Michael (age 22 and an avid cyclist) worries about Grandma beating him on the hills,” she said, laughing.

Grand Master

Undefeated in triathlons in 2005, Miller was named USA Triathlon’s Grand Master (Athlete of the Year).

The only time Miller has ever lost a race was at Lake Placid, N.Y., when she hobbled across with an injury as runner-up.

How does she do it?

“I don’t have a lot of speed,” she says, “but I can go forever.”

An understatement for the 5-foot-7, 125-pound beauty who still fits into a size two. She keeps her mind sharp with classical piano, math/philosophy readings and a mean game of bridge, but rarely takes a day off from a regimen that has her averaging 3,000 yards of swimming, a 30-40 mile bike ride, and six or seven miles of running per day, plus some yoga for flexibility.

“If I didn’t do yoga,” she quipped, “I couldn’t turn my head to see my competition.”

She doesn’t do weights, has never fallen from a bike, and has never had a surgery or serious injury — although a couple of doctors, she said, wanted to do both knees once.

She coaches herself and believes in her own strengthening exercises.

Though not a calorie counter, (“I eat when I’m hungry,” she says), Miller does watch what she eats, making sure she fuels up before each segment of competing or training.

“I do have a glass of wine once in a while.”

Though she has little left to prove, Kona’s once again calling.

“I really need to go back,” she said, pretty much decided she’ll return in 2009 to try to break her own record.

When this remarkable athlete gets the inevitable “Why do you keep doing this?” question — probably the same one posed to mountain climbers, survivalists, and daredevils — Miller returns with the answer you might expect from someone with that kind of single-minded will.

“Because I can, and because I love it.”

Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer for the Green Valley News.