Free State and Kansas University graduate Heather Schulze participates in the run, bike (above) and swim legs of the Ironman France-Nice.

If nothing else, Heather Schulze is ahead of schedule.

When she started running a few years ago, she aimed to complete a marathon by the time she turned 30.

Now 26, Schulze has completed nine of the 26.2-mile events.

When she started cross training and added cycling and swimming into the mix, she set her sights on completing a triathlon by 2008.

Earlier this year, she checked that off her to-do list, too, when she completed her first full-length triathlon. And it was a doozy, too, the Ironman France-Nice, a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run in and around Nice, France.

“Usually doing an Ironman is a long process,” explained Schulze, a longtime Lawrence resident and Free State and Kansas University graduate who currently lives in Overland Park. “Usually, you do shorter triathlons for a while, then do a half Ironman, then do a full. I did my first (sprint) triathlon last August. My bicycle didn’t come in until July. So I pretty much went, in 10 months from not having a bike to doing an Ironman.”

So is Schulze a fitness freak of nature or triathlon natural?

“I wouldn’t say I’m a natural,” she said. “I’m just someone who : I’m like this with everything. I’m very determined. I’m very rigid with schedules. I worked with a coach at K.C. Multisport, Joel Hammontree. He completed several Ironmans and is a USAT-certified coach. He wrote me a schedule. I knew every single day what I was supposed to do. For the most part, I followed the plan to the letter.”

Sometimes that plan involved waking up at 3:45 a.m. to get her 11â2 hours in the pool. And weekends consisting of 61â2 hours on the bike, followed by an hour-long run on Saturday, with a 22-mile run – Schulze ran the Hospital Hill half marathon, then tacked on an additional eight miles without stopping – the next day.

“Some of the weekends were long days,” Schulze said. “But a lot of my friends were involved in the same thing. It helped to have friends involved. If you’re having a day you’re not sure you want to do it, it helps knowing you have friends there, too.”

Tri rookie

Schulze moved to Lawrence when she was 10. She went to Lawrence High as a sophomore, then transferred when Free State opened for her junior and senior years

She ran track at West Junior High, but started cheerleading in high school and did that exclusively.

As Schulze, a physical therapist, neared her 2003 graduation at Kansas University, she started running for fitness, but then her longest competitive runs were 5Ks.

Gradually, her runs lengthened, and she ran her first marathon in November, 2004, at the Gobbler Grind in Kansas City.

“I was doing marathons for a while, and I liked them, but I wanted something different,” Schulze said. “I started doing more cross training. I started going to a spin class at an old gym and met some triathletes, so I started getting interested in triathlons. I started running and bought a new bike.”

Schulze first dipped her toe in competitive triathlons at last August’s Rose Brooks Triathlon, a so-called “sprint” triathlon consisting of a 500-meter swim, 10-mile bike ride and 5-kilometer run.

Schulze placed 11th overall in the women’s only event.

She also competed in the Jackson County (Mo.) Triathlon and finished the season at the Midwest Meltdown Triathlon at Wyandotte County Lake.

“I won that last one, and I was pretty much hooked,” Schulze said.

She planned to follow a natural progression – from sprint to half to full Ironman distances – and signed up for a half Ironman event in May in Olathe, but that event was canceled due to storms.

Thus, when Schulze headed across the pond for the Ironman France-Nice, she was looking at a nine-fold increase in competition time.

“I was going from about 11â2 hours to 13 hours,” she said. “But I always thought I would finish. I just had no idea what my time would be.”

Why France?

When Schulze started dabbling in multisports, she set 2008 as the goal for her first Ironman-distance event.

For some Ironman events – like the world championship in Kona, Hawaii – competitors must qualify or be lucky enough to win a lottery spot. Most other Ironmans in the United States fill up well in advance.

So Schulze started looking overseas.

“I had never been to Europe before, and the timing was perfect,” she said. “You didn’t have to qualify, so I just signed up. It was kind of a last-minute decision. I planned to do an Ironman in 2008, but the more I looked at it, the more the idea stuck in my head. I wanted to go to Europe anyway, so I decided to do a vacation out of it.”

Training for the June 24 event was just part of the challenge.

Schulze applied for a passport well in advance of her departure, but it was lost in the mail. Eventually it was found – reportedly in New Hampshire – and it arrived just three days before she was to leave.

And when she arrived in France, all her luggage did, too – except for her bike, which became lost in London.

“I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to go,” Schulze said. “Then my bicycle got lost. I thought I wouldn’t have a bicycle to ride.”

She arranged to borrow a bike from a Utah couple, but it was the wrong size.

“I was going to ride it anyway, since I’d come all that way,” Schulze said. “But then my bike did come in. When I finished, I thought, ‘With every obstacle I had to overcome, if I could finish this difficult race with everything I had to do to get there, I did the hardest one possible.'”

A Nice time

The race started with a swim in the Mediterranean Sea – a far cry from Schulze’s training in Shawnee Mission Park. Schulze completed it in 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Then it was onto the bike ride, a 7-hour, 28-minute grind through leg-burning climbs and eye-popping scenery.

The run – which Schulze completed in 4 hours, 42 minutes – was four laps. Beachside.

“It wasn’t the fastest course,” Schulze said. “You don’t go there to set a personal record. If you’re going for a really fast time, this isn’t the best one to do. But it’s a really difficult challenge with beautiful scenery.”

It took Schulze 13 hours and 50 minutes to finish.

“Right after, you’re kind of obviously in pain right away,” she said. “I was so in shock I did it. I sat on the cement and lay down on the road. One of my friends went with me and she pushed my bike back to the hotel. I think I called my family. Then we went out around 11:30 or midnight or so. I remember I ate a huge pizza and all the water I could drink. Surprisingly, afterwards I wasn’t more sore than I would be after a regular marathon.”

So what’s next?

Schulze hopes to compete in another Ironman-distance event this fall in Oklahoma, though she’s battling some overuse injuries.

And after that?

“I hadn’t really planned to do any more,” Schulze said. “It takes us so much of your life, it’s best not to do more than one a year. At first, I wasn’t set on any particular one, but there’s a group of 10, 15 people from K.C. Someone started the idea and signed up to do an Ironman in Germany next July, in Frankfurt. That should be entirely different. There are 400,000 spectators. It’s a big, big deal over there. My boyfriend is going, too, and it’s his first one. After that, I don’t know.”