Maori mum inspires change
Heather Skipworth has given Maori women a reason to get off the sofa and get fit, says Sarah Catherall.
Monica Stretch tipped the scales at 120 kilograms after she gave birth to her daughter four years ago. The Wainuiomata mother of four smoked, drank too much booze, and puffed walking anywhere. She fed her young family takeaways several nights a week.
It’s hard to believe today. As she cycles on her wind trainer in her Wainuiomata home, Stretch reflects on a new journey to health and fitness, one that has consumed her since she took part in her first Iron Maori event about four years ago.
The 40-year-old has replaced takeaways with healthy homecooked meals. She sets her alarm for 5.30am each morning to pedal kilometres on her stationary bike, joining friends – ’’the Hutt chickies’’ – for Sunday cycle rides.
It’s a common tale for Iron Maori founder Heather Skipworth, who has transformed hundreds of lives through her whanau-based fitness movement. The only indigenous half ironman triathlon in the world, Iron Maori challenges participants to a two kilometre swim, 90km cycle and 21.1km run. About 300 competitors raced in the inaugural event in Hawkes Bay in 2009, and the numbers have now surged, with about 2500 people competing annually in seven events here and on the Gold Coast.
Stretch’s major life shift came about four years ago, when she and her girlfriends got together after one of their best friends took her life. They wanted to pay tribute to their fitness fanatic friend, who had regularly taken part in the Iron Maori event on the Gold Coast. Recalls Stretch: ’’At the time, I was drinking hard and smoking hard. But we all decided we wanted to turn something negative into something positive.’’
The wananga student laughs remembering her first training session. Walking up Wainuiomata hill in preparation for her first Iron Maori run, she ‘‘almost died’’. Lowering herself in the pool to start her swimming training, Stretch had no idea how to swim. Iron Maori is all about community, and Stretch put a call out through the Tri Poneke training group for someone to teach her. Marama Puke began meeting at the Wainuiomata pool for training sessions.
Stretch put herself on a rigorous diet too, cutting out carbs. Gone were the takeaway meals – they’re now a once a week treat – and her husband, Leo, who has diabetes, also lost weight. ‘‘We used to have a lot of really fatty foods. The kids loved lollies, chocolate chip bikkies, that kind of thing,’’ she says.
By the time Stretch swam across the finish line in Hawkes Bay in March 2014, her weight had dropped by almost half to 65kg.
‘‘All of my family were there, watching, and it was the most amazing atmosphere. It was so incredible to be part of it.’’
‘‘I felt so great. I thought, ‘I can actually do this’. When you put your mind to something, you can do it.’’
She got the Iron Maori bug, and has competed in the quarter distance and half distance events at least once a year since then. Currently training for an Iron Maori competition to be held in November, being fit and healthy has also inspired her to conquer other challenges. She studied te reo last year, and is now studying Maori weaving. ‘‘Being fit gave me a whole new outlook on life.’’
They say that the mother is the rock of the home, whose impact can pervade through a family. That’s true of the Stretch family – her husband goes to the gym most days, while she currently trains for up to 15 hours a week. Their 12-year-old son, Rawiri, is a young Iron Maori participant, who is also playing touch rugby.
‘‘My husband loved coming and watching Iron Maori and seeing everyone getting together. There’s an amazing vibe, it’s the whole whanaungatanga (kinship). I can’t explain it but it becomes addictive because you’re there as part of something.’’
Puke’s story is similar. She was an overweight, unfit 50-year-old and a mother of a 4-year-old son when she got the Iron Maori bug. Joining the Tri Poneke training group, she was inspired by others to push herself to get fit.
Completing her first half Iron Maori last year, the 55-year-old Wellington secretary says: ‘‘I have never been so proud of myself. My medal hangs in my room where I see it every day.’’
Skipworth, who won a Queen’s Service Medal in 2014 for her commitment to improving Maori health, did her first Iron Maori in the inaugural event she founded with husband Wayne in 2009. ‘‘You never forget it. It took me 14 hours. It’s a long time to be out there, thinking and in your own head.’’
Striving for such race distances inspires a major life change and that’s the whole point. Skipworth explains that it’s not possible to train seven days a week with a hangover, or when you’re addicted to cigarettes.
The training groups that have sprung up around the country meet for lattes and ‘‘healthy kai’’ after a weekend road ride, rather than Saturday clubroom drinking sessions.
‘‘People change careers, they leave low-paying jobs and go off and study, they end their addictions and go off meds,’’ says Skipworth. ‘‘When women do that, it has a flow-on effect through a whole family.’’
Heading into the 10th anniversary of Iron Maori next year, the Hawke’s Bay mother of three says everyone is accepted and that’s the point. ‘‘No matter what shape or form, that’s fine, and everybody is embraced, not just the winner.’’