Let's start!

I've been thinking for a couple of days about how to start this blog off-and this morning it hit me: Start at the beginning!

Why triathlons? Well to answer that we are going to start with what I got into first: running.

I believe it was March 2010 when my friend Hannah and I were gchatting at work and she asked if I wanted to run a half marathon with her at the end of June. I never really thought about it before. Growing up in Newton, the Boston marathon Monday was a big spectator event but I never really thought I could do it. In the back of my mind I knew it was an idea that intrigued me but it didn't seem very realistic.

Growing up sports were a part of my life at a very young age. I'm proud to say that my first official sport was baton twirling. I was 4 at the time and I had both of my older sisters in the class. You had to be 5 to join but I guess I just did all their moves on the sidelines by myself so they decided to make an exception and let me join a year early. Clearly, from that moment on a triathlete was born!

...just kidding. Post baton twirling was the next favorite childhood sport: soccer. After that was softball and basketball. My mom was a 3 sport collegiate athlete so she was definitely very supportive of any participation in these events-especially basketball. However, in high school I decided soccer was kind of lame and the people weren't my type so I decided to switch to some sport called field hockey.

To say my high school was competitive would be in understatement. I had to play on all sorts of summer and fall teams to even think about making the Freshmen Softball team and I definitely knew all the coaches before even leaving 8th grade. Field hockey was a different sport because at the time
(I don't know if this is still the case) there is no middle school team so everyone starts not knowing what the heck to do with this awkward kinda curved-only use one side to hit the ball-why do I have to bend so much when I'm dribbling-field hockey stick.

Because we were in a very intense division my coaches philosophy was, "since we can't beat other teams that started younger in skill, we will beat them in endurance." And endurance we had. Preseason started 8 or 9 (can't remember) and didn't finish until 6/6:30 and it was HOT. Our double sessions started with a 15-20 min run both in the morning and the afternoon sessions. During the season our running times would up as the season went on so by the end of the season we were running 35-40 min before practice.

This part of practice became my favorite. I didn't have to worry about running for drills, to get the ball, to score, to prevent someone from scoring, etc...all I had to do was run (and hold my stick.) As my high school years went on, going on training runs became my favorite. I remember summering down in the Cape with my family and going for runs after coming back from the beach. They weren't too pleased that I wanted to be out in the hot August sun but it was definitely something I looked forward to everyday.

When it came time to go to college, I was a little lost child. I had no idea what I wanted to do. After having so many injuries I thought about working in Orthopedic surgery. Blood, bones, cuts and all that grossness never bothered me. However, when I learned that you had to dissect and work on cadavers in med school...I was out.

So where to go? I never actually got to answer that question as my parents kind of decided for me. I thought about going to a business related school but they said I should go to a state school for a year. Their reasoning was that I could take business classes and see if I liked them and that way they didn't waste more money if I went to a business school and didn't like it. And o yeah, I could play field hockey there.

I went. Anddddd kind of hated it. However, I learned very important lessons. (BIG LESSON: If you don't know what you want, you may end up somewhere you hate haha) So yes, I'm a one season college athlete. I didn't love my team but I had a relatively good season. What I didn't like the most about our practices was that we didn't run any more. All of our practices were about strategy and plays. I felt like I never got the work out I wanted from practice so I would go to the gym after and run for an hour on the treadmill. One of the first friends I made there was on the football team and he would always come over to me confused. He would be like, what are you doing you just had practice? I would tell him about how I didn't feel I got a good workout and that I like running.

After that Freshman year, I realized I had a passion for economics and college sports were NOT my thing. I felt like I was missing out on a lot having to schedule my classes around away games and being on a bus going to Keene, NH during the week to play a game in the snow. Also, that was when the Red Sox won the world series for the first time in 86 years so I wasn't happy having to listen to the games on the bus. Time to transfer!

Looking at all the schools in the area, Bentley seemed to be the best fit. I had always been a good student so grades weren't an issue and I think my parents were really happy they didn't have to pay the $40,000 something tuition my freshman year so it all seemed to work out.  I was also still with my high school boyfriend at the time and I'll admit, he had a lot of pull in my decision making. He wasn't thrilled I was going to be transferring to Bentley (where the student population is about 60% male) but he was in a fraternity and he was excited that Bentley had sororities and encouraged me to join one.

And join one I did...