Proving one kidney is more than enough … 2 Ironmans, 10 marathons in a year

There were more than a few super-moms competing at the Ironman World Championship in Kona this year, but one woman’s achievement truly stood out. Hilary Baude, a kindergarten teacher from Conecticut, finished the Ironman World Championship while raising money and awareness for the National Kidney Registry. Baude, along with Matt Cavanaugh, have taken the “1K12M” (one kidney, 12 marathons) challenge, completing 10 marathons over a 10 month period. Baude included two Ironmans on her list – Ironman Mont-Tremblant in August, and the Ironman World Championship in Kona in October. We caught up with Baude in Kona before the race, and she explained in her own words what inspired her to take on the 1K12M endeavour:

That journey really started in 2012. It really started with my oldest daughter (Ellie, pictured with Baude above) – we had had a lot of complications with our pregnancy. She was an identical twin and we lost her twin half way through the pregnancy. She was not expected to survive. When she was born, she had many health complications. She was premature, 2 pounds 3 ounces, she was born with two holes in her heart along with a very rare skin condition on her legs (a condition of missing skin from her hips to her knees). She needed several surgeries on her legs, and she had open heart surgery when she was five months old to fix the holes in her heart. Now she’s perfectly healthy.

I was on bed rest for two months. During that time I was so desperate for someone to be able to help me and to give me some sort of hope for her survival. Fast forward a year and she was in a healthy place, and my husband was diagnosed with cancer. So, this was going on the third year of difficult, trying times of feeling desperate and helpless and wishing that someone could just make it all better for us.

I was at home with COVID on New Year’s Eve, 2020, and I saw a CBS news broadcast of a man that needed a kidney. On the broadcast they said that if you were a relatively healthy person, and you had two kidneys, they encourage you to look into this. I did my research – a lot of research – but I pretty much instantly knew during that broadcast that if what they were saying was true, and I could maintain a healthy lifestyle, that I would donate.

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I watched that man on that broadcast and I so connected with his feeling of ‘someone help me’ and I would have given anything for someone to have the cure for our family right there in their hands. I had it for him, with no long-term effects for myself. I did a voucher donation – I gave a kidney to a stranger, and he moved to the top of the donation list.

Our goal is to show that with one kidney you can thrive, and you can take on new challenges. I never even attempted an Ironman with two kidneys. I’ve only done it since donating.

The most challenging part has been balancing. Balancing life. I’m a mom, I’m a wife. I have two daughters at home. I’m a teacher full time, I’m also getting my doctorate right now. There’s a lot to balance in combination with those peak training weeks of 17 to 20 hours of training a week. It’s a lot to manage, but I feel like it’s been well worth it.

This has meant a lot for my daughters. My youngest is four – she doesn’t quite get it, but she does understand the basic concept. She’ll say ‘I’ve donated a kidney, now I’m going to run a marathon’ and run around the house. My oldest, she definitely grasps the enormity of it, and is very proud and tells all of her teachers and all of her friends all about it, and I think it means a lot her and she knows that she was the root of all of this.

Hilary Baude finished the race in 11:24:56, 88th out of 324 in her 40 to 44 age group. She completed the New York City Marathon in 3:38:34. She rounded out the 1K12M challenge at the Philadelphia Marathon, her fastest of the year (3:34:53), a time that qualifies her for the Boston Marathon.

This story originally appeared in the Nice and Kona Special of Triathlon Magazine.