Jim Simons kicked the habit years ago; now he smokes the competition

By TIM DUMAS Chronicle Sports Editor

Twelve races, 32,000 miles traveled, seven states, one foreign country … in seven months: ho hum.

DEIRDRE EITEL/CHRONICLE Jim Simons rides his bike Thursday, Oct. 30, at Peets Hill in Bozeman. Sixty pounds lost: no biggy.

Cancer survivor: sighhhh.

Sixty-five years old: bor-ing.

These feats may sound impressive to you, but to Jim Simons, not so much.

The Bozeman certified public accountant has made mountain biking his passion after lifting cigarettes n and little else - for more than 30 years.

Included in his dozen stops in 2008 are 24-hour races in California, Georgia, Vermont, Utah, Wisconsin and Montana’s own event in Rapeljie. He also competed in the International Cycling Union World Championships in France.

All this from a longtime slacker who once thought bicycles were for “sissies.”

Again, his success in the saddle n he placed fourth in the overall 24-hour series n is met with a shrug.

“I don’t think of myself as an inspiration - although I get lots of ‘atta-boys’ at races - because I’m such a regular guy,” he said. “I couldn’t have done anything extraordinary because I’m such a regular guy.”

Simons, an Alabama native, was once a 190-pound work-obsessed CPA whose signature was not pedaling, but coughing.

But the transformation from chain smoker to chain spoker wasn’t an instant one.

Just getting to the gym was literally a chore.

He bought a membership, but never set foot inside. It went like that for six months; his money, among other things, was wasting away.

So Jim made a deal with the gym: just get there.

“My first promise to myself was that when I left work, I would drive to the gym and sit in front of my locker, and that was the only thing that I had to do,” he said. “If I thought about the whole big thing of working out and the whole nine yards … once I got into the habit of sitting down and working out, I automatically turned left to go to the gym instead of right to go home.

“It was little bitty, teeny weeny baby steps.”

Correction: giant steps.

“From the time that I was 18 and went to college until 12 or 15 years ago when I quit smoking,” Simons, who runs his own firm on Durston Road, says, “the heaviest thing I picked up was my Cross pen to do a tax return. I did nothing. Nothing.”

Once the gym became his habit, he bought a bicycle n his first in 40 years.

He did own a motorcycle during that time; it was what brought him to Montana 24 years ago. He had been living in Miami, but during a 14,000-mile cross-country trip, he traveled through Bozeman and “fell in love with the West.”

Four months later he sold his practice, despite the memory of a 35-degrees-below-zero reading the first night he spent in Montana.

“I found out I wasn’t a big city boy,” he said.

Simons’ first mountain bike race was the local Bohart Bash during the early part of this decade. His only child, Alan, (Jim divorced 30 years ago and is still single) later talked him into participating in a race in Colorado.

Jim has needed little prodding since, although there was a setback along the way.

Four years ago, his doctor noticed his left eyelid was drooping. A more thorough inspection revealed mantle cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, in his tear gland.

The difficult-to-treat cancer comes with an average survival time of three years. After chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Simons has sped past that timeline.

And now he feels a kinship with another bike-riding cancer survivor: Lance Armstrong. Naturally, Simons wears a yellow LIVESTRONG band around his wrist.

“A lot of the things he says, all of them have similar threads, like, ‘it changes your priorities,’” Simons said. “What you used to know was important but never came to the top of the list is up there at the top of the list now.”

Now that the racing season is over, Simons will do his best to go to the gym n and not just sit there. He’ll keep busy at work n a job he says is “a rush” n until tax season ends in mid-April.

He might not travel as much next year, but he’s already signed up for the world championships in France next summer.

And if you think of Simons as extraordinary, he has a message for you.

“Here’s a regular, normal, 65-year old guy who’s a freaking CPA that can do this stuff,” he says. “Not with the expectation of winning n but who gets out there and does the best that he can.

“Anybody can do it.”

Reader Comments