MOUNT VERNON – Andi Cooper is unbreakable. The Mount Vernon multi-sport athlete has always found a way to persevere.
On Saturday, June 19, Cooper participated in the Wood Splitter Summer Solstice Trail Run.
The biannual run on the 42-acre Last Straw Farm — located a few miles west of Mount Vernon — benefits the charity For Those That Would, which helps endurance athletes who can no longer participate due to physical challenges.
The course is a fairly flat,1 1/2-mile circuit. Runners can choose to run all day from sunrise to sunset, but Cooper optioned to take the 4-hour run, covering a total of 18 miles — under threatening skies. That placed her first among women in the four-hour category.
It was a successful step in a journey that has taken Cooper six years. A physical therapist at Knox Community Hospital, she was introduced to the triathlon by friend and co-worker Brenda Hoffman.
“I always admired (Hoffman’s) tenacity when training for her races,” Cooper said. “She set her sights on her first Olympic distance race and began training.”
In April of 2015, tragedy struck when Hoffman was hit and killed by a distracted driver while on a training ride. That day, Cooper vowed to finish what Hoffman started and complete an Olympic-distance triathlon.
Cooper needed reconstructive hip surgery because of overtraining. She didn’t even know how to swim and was facing the biggest challenge of her life.
“I rehabbed my way back from the surgery,” she said, “I didn’t own a bike, but I signed up for my first (sprint triathlon) in August 2016. I won my age group and placed third overall female, qualifying me for the 2017 Nationals.”
A bout with mononucleosis in mid-2017 derailed Cooper’s plans. A long, slow recovery took all of her hard-earned conditioning away. By February of 2018, she found another challenge to pursue — and another bump in the road.
“I participated in an indoor sand volleyball tournament,” Cooper said. “While diving for a ball in our first game of the night, my head collided with a teammate’s torso. Although I knew better, I shook off the cobwebs and continued playing the rest of the night.”
It was Cooper’s seventh-lifetime concussion, and it soon sidelined her. Then she attempted to come back too soon and sustained another concussion in June of 2018.
“That one devastated me,” Cooper said. “I had severe balance deficits, I was extremely forgetful, I struggled to process new information or problem-solve and spent most of my days nauseated and dizzy. I enrolled in speech therapy at work to address my cognitive deficits.”
By January 2019, Cooper had been unable to exercise on a regular basis for 18 months when she started working back into shape. In June, she completed a sprint triathlon, and it appeared that she would finally get a chance to compete in that elusive Olympic-distance triathlon. Then COVID-19 hit and her plans were dashed again.
But that didn’t stop Cooper, now in her 40s, who discovered yoga as a way to help with her mobility. By May 2020 she rode 100 kilometers, and in June she completed her first ultramarathon, running 40.14 miles.
Cooper also added mountain biking, which was difficult because she still had symptoms of dizziness related to her two concussions in 2018. She still has to pace herself because of her injuries. But it is the way she met those challenges that landed her on Team Unbreakables, a new group within the Wattie Ink race team whose members have overcome significant illness, injuries or emotional trauma. Cooper may not have reached her goal yet, but her determination has left a real impression.
“I met her a few years ago in a race that we both ran,” Wood Splitter Trail Run organizer Caylan Hord said. “Then she came out to the Wood Splitter race and we have kept in touch. Yes, she is quite the individual and a real competitor.”
