Kim Martin didn’t expect to be home this weekend.

“Today I should be driving to Canada,” Martin said, standing outside Kennebec Valley Coaching in Augusta late Thursday afternoon.

This weekend, Martin, 46, was scheduled to compete in the Mont Tremblant Ironman race in Quebec. The event was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so Martin must wait for her Ironman debut. Rather than dwell on the negative, Martin looks at the positives. This gives her the opportunity to work on her swimming skills.

“With everything going on, that’s one thing I can hang on to,” Martin said.

An Augusta resident and a hospice nurse, Martin got into racing after losing more than 100 pounds. She took a few minutes to talk about her fitness regimen.

You just alluded to it. You lost more than 100 pounds.

Three years ago, almost to the day, actually. On August 25, 2017, I had bariatric surgery, a gastric sleeve. I lost a total of 116 (pounds). I’ve put a few of them back on with Covid, but training with Amy (Lawson, owner of Kennebec Valley Coaching), working on triathlons and marathons and things like that, are the way I’ve kept the weight off  and gotten into shape after losing the weight.

I used to weight 261, and I was anywhere from a size 24 and a size 26. I’m not that anymore. This is the way I maintain that.

What got you into training for triathlons to begin with?

When I turned 40 I started running. My goal was to run the Walt Disney World Marathon before I was 45. In that time span, I had the weight loss surgery, and I ran that race. I kind of looked at Amy and was ‘Well, what’s next?’ I’d run a marathon, and that was all I’d thought about. She said ‘Have you ever done triathlon? Would you consider doing a half Ironman?’ We talked about that and we talked about a plan on how to bridge that up to Ironman, because I really wanted to do the Ironman. Last year on the 23rd of August, I did the Ironman 70.3, which is the half Ironman, which is a 1.2 swim in the ocean, then a 56-mile bike ride, and then a 13.1-mile run.

That was last year. That was kind of the bridge year. This year was supposed to be triathlon. I just like the way it makes you feel, to be able to say you could do that. In most of my life that was just something that was never really attainable for me. It was never even really a possibility. It feels nice to be in a different body and be able to do things and move in ways I just couldn’t do before.

Swimming, biking, running. Do you have a favorite? Or a least favorite?

My favorite used to be running. That was where I started, and I really do love running. I actually really hated swimming up until about May or June of last year. I skipped a lot of swim training at the beginning of half Iron training last year. And then I just started doing a lot of swimming and I realized it’s really kind of meditative and it’s very soothing. It’s quickly become my favorite.

I really love to swim in open water. I have a wetsuit and a buoy. I’ll go out and I’ll swim in Winthrop (in Maranacook Lake) along the buoy line. It’s just this amazing thing to be in this other world of quiet. There’s little fish swimming underneath you and these rock formations and these amazing spirals of seaweed that grow up from the seaweed beds. Just to be able to have that total bubble is something else. It reduces a ton of stress, and my job is stressful and life is stressful. It’s just a nice balance and it feels good.

So, no Tremblant this year.

No, no Tremblant. No nothing.

Does (training) help get over that sting. We all know there’s nothing we can do about it.

It does. For a while, when everything was getting cancelled, it felt almost like a loss. I don’t know how to be just a regular exerciser. From the time I started all of this, I was always working towards a race and towards a goal. There always had to be this training plan and this end point. To have a season where every training plan gets cancelled, every end point is cancelled, like a lot of people who go to KVC, I was floundering for a little bit and didn’t quite know what to do when we would stop and start and stop and start. Finally, Amy and I just talked about, let’s build a really solid base in something. Work on a goal.

So I’m working on losing some of the few pounds I’ve gained back. I’m trying to lose 20 pounds this summer into fall. I’m trying to get really good at one sport, which right now is swimming. I’ve put a lot of effort in swimmnig, and more minimal into the bike and the run just as cross training. I just want to go into next season feeling really good in my body. So eating well, having a good base of exercise, through swimming and other things to build up the cardiovascular, and just being in a good head space and rested so that next season’s training, which is really, really intense, maybe I can use this year as an advantage. That my body is really rested and in a good place to do it. Maybe be able to do it a level a little higher than I would’ve if I did this year.

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