Kinesiologist channels energy into teaching, rehab work

Photo: Jeff Miller

Tim Gattenby says, “I’m the epitome of a late bloomer, and I think I’m still blooming.”

Indeed, the blooming of this assistant faculty associate in kinesiology has been blazing. Gattenby has qualified twice to compete in the World Ironman Championship in Hawaii; has twice blown away the competition to win the Minnesota Border to Border, a grueling 550-mile triathlon; and has taken third in the 427-mile National Michigan 24-hour Bicycle Race. And last summer he commuted 80 miles roundtrip from his home in Ridgeway to Madison — on a mountain bike, as training for a race in Wausau.

So Gattenby must be a jock from way back, a man who can master all things athletic, right? Oh, so wrong, he says: “I was lucky to make junior varsity sports in high school. I didn’t have a lot of natural talent.” But long after many of the more gifted players in his high school have expanded their personal circumference, Gattenby is still slim, trim and going great guns in self-propelled sports.

The transition from high school JV to world-class Ironman began with but a bike ride — a really long one. In college he decided to pedal the 500-plus miles from Fidalgo Island in Puget Sound, where he grew up, to Washington State University in Pullman, where he was enrolled.

“I loved competing with myself and the elements on that trip,” says Gattenby. “I met bicyclists along the way, but nobody wanted to ride at my pace. I learned a lot about my state and its environment, since bicycling is the next-best thing to walking for really seeing something.”

Being able to see forever from the air led Gattenby to try skydiving as a college student. He took his first jump in winter and landed on a field full of frozen furrows, breaking his leg in three places. He walked on it to the nearest road and tore several ligaments in the process, ending up with pins, plates and screws in his leg.

“A doctor told me that I was never going to be the same,” he says. “That made me really mad — nobody has the right to take your hope away. That’s why I think of that doctor every time I cross a finish line.”

Gattenby’s accident and successful recovery have packed a pedagogical punch into his teaching. His course on Adapted Fitness and Personal Training draws about 100 students a year, with and without disabilities. It focuses on individual goals, including stress management, injury rehabilitation, cerebral palsy, arthritis, vision or hearing problems, and weight control.

“Whatever the goals of the student, I tell them that we’ll find a way to achieve them,” he says.

In his summer course on Outdoor Pursuits, he teaches physical education teachers how to connect with students who are turned off by traditional PE. He leads sessions in orienteering, bicycling, archery, rock climbing, rollerblading, kayaking, canoeing and adventure racing. (Adventure racing is a multisport event that typically takes place in wilderness areas and goes beyond the triathlon events of swim-bike-run.)

“I want physical education teachers to engage kids and get them back into shape,” says Gattenby.

He’s a personal trainer himself, with private clients such as triathletes, bicyclists and people who want to lose weight. For them and other students he hews to a consistent theme: “My driving force is use it or lose it.”

And he practices his preaching. He uses the skills he has and is constantly adding to his repertoire. “I try one new thing every year,” says Gattenby. “I’m more interested in what I’m not doing.”

Most of his activities are outdoors, which he’s loved since his childhood on Fidalgo Island, part of the San Juans near Seattle. “I could go fish on a beach with a mountain in the background,” he says. “It was paradise.”

He’s found another slice of paradise on his 23 acres near Ridgeway, where he lives with his wife, Sue Gattenby, and their 1-year-old daughter, Tayla. They are expecting their second child in mid-November.

Their land is forested with huge rocky outcroppings, meadows, caves and coyotes. There are deer, too, which he hunts the hard way — bow and arrow.

“It’s just a stick and string, without even sights,” he says, “but it helps me provide my family with meat that’s free of chemicals and genetic manipulation.”

As in all his other passions, Gattenby goes full-tilt as a hunter. He’s trailed moose in Alaska, bear in Canada and wild hogs in Georgia. And he even tans his own hides and uses the sinew to tie arrowheads onto the shafts.

It makes you tired just hearing what he’s done with his life since that doctor told him he’d never be the same.

“I can rest,” he says with a smile, “when I’m dead.”