Boot Camp Guest Blogger: Finding the Athlete Inside

I was not born athletic. Nor was I born with a strong likelihood to play a sport. How do I know this? Well, it just wasn’t “in my genes.” I can look through the family tree and see that any hobby or activity that mom or dad’s side may have participated in while surely entertaining did not include any sort of physical exertion.

My mom, the catalyst that she is, decided she wanted a different path for me, so at age 5, I started soccer at the local YMCA. It took several years before I began to grow strong in soccer and despite the fact that I had butterflies every time the whistle blew to start a game, I was sort of beginning to enjoy it. I continued to play soccer through high school and changed it up in the spring by running cross country and starting lacrosse.

You can imagine the look on my great aunt’s face when I announced during the fall of my freshman year of college that I was going to run a 5k race. ‘You’re gonna pay money to run?’ ‘Do you think you’ll make it?’

It was like my drive to be active had gotten out of hand. I did not have the natural born abilities to run such a race, but something in me told me to go for it. I loved running that race. I trained. I had calculated workouts to achieve and times to beat. It was a hard race, but I had prepared like an athlete and crossing that finish line, I felt like one too! I was among a family of runners all striving and overcoming.

When I came to D1 I felt a bond with the other adults – initially it was the shared experience that we’re all freaked out to use the Groupon for unlimited bootcamp during the hottest month in Tennessee. Overtime, I realized it was a bond that was really more of a community. A family of athletes preparing to be the best we can be. It’s really good to be under the direction of a coach again. D1 truly is the place for the athlete. Even those of us that just turned into one.