Your sports journey

Defying the odds, Karen Newman is showing the world what’s possible.

At the start line on June 23 everything was still. then the gun fired, and Karen Newman plunged into the waters of Lake Dunmore for the swim leg of the Vermont sun Triathlon. For 600 yards, her world was consumed by churning water and the kicking feet of other swimmers. She was one of the pack, wearing the number one bib she’d earned as a past Vermont sun Triathlon series Champion.

Karen reached the shore and jumped on her bike, feeling her slim but strong five-foot-three-inch frame relax as she eased her pelvis onto the saddle. She felt none of the pain that had debilitated her just a few days before, a pain that made her wonder

Karen Newman in her element, after winning the silver medal for her age group at the 2015 Huntsman senior Games.
how long she could bear to sit. in that instant, she knew this race would be about winning, not just finishing. 

As she ran the last mile, Karen was flying, dark hair streaming behind her. Her husband Peter Newman filmed her as she closed in on the finish line. “It was like watching a 16-year-old run. I choke up just thinking about the joy in her smile,” said Peter. “I sent the video to our three boys, who couldn’t be there that day, with the headline ‘Screw Cancer.’”

Karen raced the sprint triathlon just one week after finishing radiation treatment for stage IV metastatic breast cancer. It was the third Camiseta Bayern Munich time in 10 years that she had faced a stage III or IV cancer diagnosis. On June 22, she wrote in her blog, “Tomorrow I will race in my last triathlon… It’s been nearly 30 years, more than half my life.”

  At 57, she finished the race 6th overall among women, beating competitors half her age, with a time of 1:20.48. At 23:16.9, she had the fourth fastest run for women for the 5K. She finished the 600-yard swim in 10:18.2 and the 14.25-mile bike leg in 45:14.7 and she won her age group. 

On Mother’s Day, 2018, nearly two years to the day since she had received her second diagnosis, Karen Newman learned she had another new tumor, this one at the bottom of her spine in her sacrum. She was also told that several tumors in her pelvis were growing. The doctor who read her PET scan told her that one should have cracked her pubic bone, though it has not. For weeks, she couldn’t sit down for pain in her pelvis and back. In June, she underwent another round of radiation, which was especially tough on her body because other delicate organs and tissue near the tumors were affected.

“I was worried the bike ride would break my pubic bone,” said Karen when I met her at her family’s lakefront cottage in Charlotte in early July. “But I jumped right back into racing mode, and I guess the warrior in me came out.” Fourteen days later, she would be flying to Denmark for the Aquathlon world championships on July 12. She said it would be her last.

The Warrior
Karen has been a warrior of sorts on and off the triathlon circuit for more than 30 years. She was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child and is now the published author of a memoir, just three Words. She struggled with an eating disorder for half her life

Karen Newman at the Vermont sun Triathlon, June 2018
(and beat it) and currently serves as the president of the Vermont Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. She didn’t start racing triathlons seriously until she was in her late 30s and has competed in nine international Triathlon Union world championships in aquathlon and sprint triathlon since 2001.

Karen started out as a cross-country runner at the university of Vermont. It was there that she met Peter Newman. He was a freshman tennis player and she was a sophomore. At a fraternity party, she asked him if he wanted to go for a run with her early the following morning. She picked him up and they ran the streets of Burlington in a blizzard. They dated for seven years, until parting ways in new York City in 1988.

One year later, Karen was engaged to another man and on her way to finishing what would have been a sub-three-hour marathon. When she got to  the 24-mile mark of the 1989 new York Marathon, there was Peter, with a sign. He’d chased her for seven miles. The sign said, “Go Karen Stetson” on one side and “Will you marry me?” on the other.

“She stopped running to stare at me. All she said was, ‘Are you serious?’” said Peter. Karen said yes right then and there and finished with a time of 3:33:00. Camiseta Selección de fútbol de Gales She maintains that Peter was worth slowing down for.

Peter proposed to Karen at the 24-mile mark of the 1989 new York City Marathon.
Karen will be the first to tell you that she didn’t start competing seriously in triathlons until 2000, after her sons Stetson, now 26, Chase, 24, and Trent, 19, were born.

Steve Hare, owner of Vermont sun fitness Centers and founder and organizer of the Vermont sun Triathlon Series, said Karen has competed in his races for more than 15 years. “She started Camiseta Corinthians Paulista winning in her ‘40s, and everynullnull