Dynamic Duo? Us!

http://www.windycitysports.com/article/?Guid=ffbcb9da-2e87-44bc-af7a-5ab078360c20&Page=10

Matt and Megan Hutchinson Krings, dynamic duo



You could almost say that it was love at first sight. At least that’s true for Megan Hutchinson Krings—and later her husband Matt—when she signed up for the Team in Training program at the 2006 LaSalle Bank Shamrock Shuffle. “It was at the expo that we saw the Leukemia & Lymphoma’s Society’s Team in Training booth,” Megan explains. “We talked to the folks staffing the booth, I all too quickly confessed, ‘Lymphoma! That’s what I have.” Matt and I shared our story, and I knew that once I was completely finished with treatment, I’d be joining the team.”
One month before Megan and Matt’s 2005 wedding, Megan was in a 15-passenger van rollover accident. As if that wasn’t enough, doctors discovered a baseball-sized mass in her chest later diagnosed as Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She had to begin treatments two weeks after returning from her honeymoon. Not the best way to break into being newlyweds as Megan describes how she became more lethargic with each round of chemo and faced weight gain from the steroids she took for lung damage. “Pre-cancer I had always been really active—century bike rides, swimming, teaching water aerobics—but during treatment I was weak, restless and stressed out,” she says.

She started off slowly by walking the Shamrock Shuffle and then trained to finish the 2006 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon as a TNT member. But the marathon wasn’t enough and Megan had another goal she wanted to accomplish: the triathlon. “I’ve spent most of my teens and 20s as a swimmer and a cyclist, I felt I needed that season of running to become a runner,” she says. “I think I made it a goal when I was 19 to do a tri but the time I hit 30—I’m 29, and I’ll do four tris this year.”

And Megan’s bringing her husband along for the ride, first as her support crew and now as fellow racer. “I have never completed a race,” he says. “This is my first.” After speaking with the Team in Training staff at an expo in April while Megan registered for the team, Matt decided he could complete the triathlon, too. “I chose triathlon because I feel that the cross-training nature of the sport makes it an endurance event that I am less likely to suffer injury from,” he says. “I also really like spending time training with my wife.”

As for Megan’s health, she attributes last year’s marathon training to help her regain most of her lung capacity and doesn’t feel the disease inhibiting her as much—she had to run/walk the marathon. Her training is her therapy. “Now I use the disease as a motivation. I think about how relieved I am to be out of treatment.”