Age: 32
Residence: Charlotte
Family: Husband, Peter Schneider; sons Griffin, 5 and Eliot, 4; daughter, Ava, 1
Occupation: Enrollment management analyst for UVM and land developer
Primary Sport: Triathlons and running
VS: You work full time, have three children, and still race. How do you find the time?
JD: I get up pretty much at 5 most mornings, and I also work from home, so I have some flexibility. I try to use my hour in the morning to have some alone time. I’ve done my fair share of pushing baby joggers. My eldest son is five, and he just joined the swim team, so he’ll do laps in the same lane with me. He’ll last 40 minutes. My husband and I will get a babysitter and go on a bike ride—that’s what we do for dates. I could never compete if it weren’t for my husband. He is very supportive of my extra-curricular athletic pursuits, and he makes it possible for me to fit in training and racing. It is a big time commitment as a mom of young kids, and he turns training and racing into a family event by bringing all of the kids along to cheer me on.
VS: What do you think when you hear people say they don’t have the time to exercise?
JD: I think you can always find the time. Even commuting to work on a bike or just getting up earlier. The easiest thing to do is get up early and get it over with. Even for me, and I love to exercise, as the day goes on, I can find more and more things to do besides run or bike. When you get up at 5 in the morning, nobody else is awake, and there’s nothing to do. Also, find a buddy. It’s much easier to drag yourself out of bed in the morning if you’re meeting somebody.
VS: What do you like about triathlons?
JD: I really like the atmosphere. It’s a sport where there are people who have so many different goals. There are some people who are there to win, but there are so many people who are so happy to just finish. And you’re beginning and ending at a lake, and there are lots of kids running around, which is a nice atmosphere. I also like how it feels on my body to train for three sports. So far I haven’t gotten injured at all.
VS: You’ve been doing road races since you were seven. Were your parents behind this?
JD: Growing up, both my parents ran and did marathons and road races. My first race was the four-mile Bennington Road Race. The first time I ran it I was seven. I remember I beat my neighbor who was 30-something at the time. I had that reputation for a long time, and I always wanted to run farther distances. I was very self-motivated, and I remember just begging my parents to do longer races. I wanted to do a 10K. Now that I have my five-year-old son, I see why my parents told me to just relax and have fun. Now, our boys are playing triathlon—they put on goggles and run around the house and pretend they’re in the swim.
VS: With your lifelong experience, have you ever had a bad experience in a race?
JD: I ran in the Boston Marathon in ‘99, and I entered it as a bandit. I’d been doing it my whole life, and didn’t think twice about jumping in. I was a little bit sick going into it and during that race I just started to feel awful, around mile eight. The thought never crossed my mind to drop out. I kept running, just thinking, I will feel horrible tomorrow. But by mile 20, I couldn’t really bend my legs. I finished, threw up, and went to the hospital. I had rhabdomyolysis, which is exercise-induced kidney failure. I was in the hospital for a week, and it took a month before I could even take a walk. It was about two or three years after that happened before I competed again. In that time I hiked the Appalachian Trail and did other things. Now I make sure that when I cross the finish line, I’m in good enough condition to be a mother for the rest of the day, so I try to have fun out there. Now I know I have an abnormally high pain threshold, so I shouldn’t go as hard as I possibly can.
VS: How was your Appalachian Trail experience?
JD: I had never backpacked. My husband and I lived in Boston and just had that marathon experience. We were hiking up in the Whites asking ourselves, “Do we really want to live in Boston?” I grew up in Vermont and really missed it. So on this hike, we saw these white blazes, and we were like, “What is that?” After our hike, we got a book, learned about the AT, drove back to Boston, and quit our jobs two days later to hike. We went out and bought all of our equipment, and then we realized it was the wrong time of year—after we quit our jobs. So we hiked north to south. I loved every day of it. When we got to Georgia we almost decided to walk home again. We thought, “Wouldn’t this just be great to walk home in the winter?” It was very quiet when we were out there. We didn’t see many people. I just love to be outside all day and the simplicity of walking. I just love the feeling of being strong and athletic. We definitely hope to do at least a large section of it with the kids.
VS: What would you suggest a first-timer take on the trail?
JD: A friend! Sharing the experience with my husband made the whole thing so much more enjoyable.
VS: You just moved to Charlotte from Burlington. Why the change?
JD: We bought 60 acres in Charlotte and are creating a green housing project, Williams Hill. The homes are all LEED-certified and will be tied into the grid, but we will be generating power through rotating photovoltaic panels, and we’ll be testing for wind. We are looking for a mix of living in the country but having connection to neighbors. So these lots are an acre in size, and the acreage is adjacent to the school and Pease Mountain natural area. The kids can walk to school, and there is a huge trail network and natural area to spread out in. My husband is a green building consultant, and we never meant to be developers. But now that we are, we feel we should do the best we can to be as sustainable as possible.
VS: What do you do outside of athletics for fun?
JD: Trying to accomplish work full-time and with our development, that doesn’t leave much free time. Last winter I started taking hip-hop dance classes at the Flynn. It’s really hard! I had never taken a dance class before. It’s a totally different way of a sport. And we live on a block with a lot of young families, so pretty much every day, if you go out around four or five, the kids can play and the adults can socialize.
VS: What restaurants do you enjoy in the Burlington area?
JD: Shelburne Farms. It’s great because the whole night can be an experience. We get a glass of wine and walk around the grounds, which are just gorgeous, and ideally eat outside on the patio.
—Sky Barsch
