Smyrna women to race in Ironman

By Ken Sugiura

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About 1,800 triathletes will wade into the Pacific Ocean early Saturday morning in Hawaii for the Ironman World Championship. Somewhere among them will be two women from Smyrna, wherein lies a story.

One is a 24-year-old auditor with an impressive swimming background and a glowing future in her new sport. The other is a 45-year-old corporate lender, a former national triathlon champion who is trying to ward off a cancer for which there is no known cure.

Haley Chura and Betty Mills make quite a pair.

"It is a mother-daughter relationship in several ways," said Matthew Rose, their coach at Chamblee-based Dynamo Multisport, a triathlon training group. "Betty was Haley's second coach, almost."

Chura, the auditor, and Mills, the banker, are two of about 10 metro Atlanta triathletes competing in the Ironman race in Kona, Hawaii. Both are competing for the first time in one of the most punishing events on the planet: a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. Bound together by hundreds of training hours, Chura and Mills got to Hawaii together, both figuratively and literally.

"Even when it's cold and raining, it's been so much fun," said Chura, a Georgia graduate who was on the Bulldogs' 2005 national championship team. "If you're going to be out there for 10 hours biking and running, you might as well enjoy it."

Chura and Mills met while swimming for the Dynamo masters swim team in 2007. Mills, who won the Olympic-distance triathlon national title in 1996 for the 30-34 age group but later left the sport because of injury, had taken up open-water swimming. Chura, even though she had begun working full-time, was training for her second U.S. Olympic trials, which she eventually did.

Sharing a lane with other women, the two became quick friends.

"We have the best time," Chura said. "We get in trouble for our words-to-yards ratio."

Like Chura, Mills had swum in college at Texas Tech. Both, in fact, had been coached by Georgia coach Jack Bauerle, Chura at Georgia and Mills when she was in high school in Athens.

"I think we both have the same temperament," Mills said. "We both like to work hard in athletics, and I think we're both positive people."

Said Chura, "She's a pretty hip 45-year-old, and I'm probably an extremely dorky 24-year-old, so we even each other out."

Bauerle speaks fondly of both, noting they were "aggressive" in their training.

Mills' and Chura's competing in the Ironman "doesn't surprise me," he said. "If I were to pick a few [former swimmers] out that might do this, these would be the ones."

When Dynamo started a triathlon group in late 2008, they were the first two to sign up. Chura had gotten into marathons through co-workers, who then egged her on to expand into triathlons. Mills decided to get back into the sport after an inspirational visit with her boyfriend (and now husband, Ernie Jenelle) to Kona and the Ironman course while on a work trip to Hawaii.

Chura was a novice.

"She had a little bit of a clunker-type bike that she had bought on the cheap off of Craigslist," Rose said.

Mills, an expert cyclist, helped her friend along with advice and encouragement. On training rides, Rose explained, triathletes can be like sharks smelling blood, pushing the pace when they sense a rider is faltering.

"There'd be times Haley would get dropped from the group and Betty was always making sure she'd wait up for Haley," Rose said.

It is the sort of graceful act consistent with someone who has made peace with her disease. About six years ago, Mills was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer that counts for just 1 percent of all diagnosed cancers. Mills has not developed symptoms of the disease, for which a cure has yet to be found.

"I just go to the doctor every three months and, God willing, hopefully I never have to have treatment and it doesn't progress," Mills said. "I don't let it worry me. I just turn it over to God and that's what I do."

"I think it's remarkable for anybody" to compete in an Ironman, said Jonathan Kaufman, an oncologist at Emory University who specializes in multiple myeloma. "And for somebody who has this, I think it's uniquely remarkable."

At their peak, Mills and Chura trained more than 20 hours weekly in all three disciplines. Mills qualified for the Ironman in May by finishing second in her age group at a half-Ironman in Hawaii. Chura won her age group at a different half-Ironman in Rhode Island in July to qualify. Both Mills and Rose believe that Chura has the potential to compete professionally.

"It's pretty cool when you realize you can do something more than you thought you could," Chura said.

It's even cooler, two women from Smyrna have found, when you can do that with a friend.