The Recipe for a Professional Triathlete

Now that I have officially announced my intention to pursue a professional triathlon career beginning in 2018 (click here for the announcement if you haven't seen it already), an interesting question remains. This all happened so quickly - how did I even get here? How does one become a professional triathlete?

There are many answers to this question, but my road to a professional triathlon career was quite unconventional. I wasn't introduced to the sport by parents or relatives earlier in life, nor was I recruited by USAT by virtue of being an excellent collegiate swimmer or runner. In fact, my collegiate athletic career - particularly on the running side - was quite underwhelming (more on that later). Until August 2016, I hadn't touched a bike since age 13. And for goodness' sake, I didn't even know that most bike tires have tubes in them until I bought my first TT bike. So really, how did I even get here?

To begin answering this question, we must travel back in time to my childhood, around age 6 when my family moved to Bend, Oregon. Much like Boulder, Bend is a mountain town in the high desert with an extremely active, outdoorsy population. It was here that I really started to get into all kinds of sports. Prior to living in Bend, I had only been involved in soccer and ballet, but I had loved the water since I was only a few months old. Upon moving to Bend, I decided I didn't want to be a "girly girl" anymore (no more ballet for me! After all, I was so painfully shy I didn't even want to participate in recitals, so what was the point?); thus began my competitive swimming career.

I was a tiny, rail-thin kid - skin and bones - often competing against girls seemingly twice my size, but by virtue of hard work and excellent stroke technique instilled in me by my coach Eric Smith, I was winning state swimming championships by age 8. Meanwhile, I continued playing soccer, and later I picked up cross-country skiing, indoor rock climbing, and basketball. I also ran a few road and trail races for fun, hitting a sub-22 minute 5K at age 9 purely off of cross-training from other sports. Looking back on all this, it is clear that I was primed for the multisport life at an early age.

Pilot Butte "Race to the Summit" in Bend (age 9)

It was not until age 10 that I began running-specific training, participating in Junior Olympic track and cross-country, which I continued through middle school and freshman year of high school. At this time in my life, running came so easily to me. My tiny frame flew around the track to multiple state championships, national championship medals, and an Oregon state record in the 3K for 11-12 year olds. And all of this came off of no more than 3-4 days and 10-15 miles per week of running - on the other 3-4 days, I still attended swim practice, and often my summer weekends would consist of a Saturday track meet and a Sunday swim meet. But at this point, running became my favored sport. In swimming, at around age 11, I reached a plateau where my times began to bottom out. Most of my competition began going through puberty, and I simply could not keep up. Whereas before I had been winning state championships, now I was struggling to even make state qualifying times.

Fast forward to my freshman year of high school in Portland, and the situation reversed. As a 13-year-old, I reached a high point in running with a 10:35, 5th place 3K performance at Junior Olympic Nationals. Then I hit a late growth spurt in which - over the course of high school - I grew 6 inches and gained 30 lbs. My running stalled out for several years as my body continued to adjust to changes. Mentally, this was not a fun time. I didn't feel like a runner anymore. Although I still won small-school district titles and landed on the podium at state, I was embarrassed by my "slow" times. I cried. Some days, I wanted nothing more than to quit. On a recruiting visit, a college coach even noted that my times were going in the wrong direction and expressed disinterest in me as a result. However, through all of this, I was lucky enough to have a second sport - swimming - where puberty actually had a positive effect on my results. With newfound strength from my growth spurt, the scales finally tipped and my times began to improve again. As a 16 year old, I barely missed out on my first Senior Sectional cut. Swimming gave me an outlet through which I could re-direct the energy I had put into running throughout middle school, and allowed me to see athletic success even while my body was undergoing changes that negatively affected my running in the present. This worked wonders both for my self-esteem and for my fulfillment as a competitive athlete.

2007 USATF National Junior Olympic Track & Field Championships (age 13)

Ultimately, I elected to attend Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon - a small, private, NCAA Division III liberal arts college where I would be able to compete in both of my sports as well as pursue academics at a high level. In the fall of 2011, I entered my first collegiate cross-country season having finally run a PR on the track for the first time in 4 years. In this way, I had finally begun adjusting to my "new body," but the struggles were far from over. In high school, I had maintained a regimen of 15-mile running weeks while swimming and running on alternate days throughout track and cross-country seasons. My "long runs" maxed out at about 5 miles. Boy was I in for a rude awakening on the college running scene.

At my first Lewis & Clark cross-country workout, we set out on a two-mile warm up. (TWO MILES?!?! That's half of my usual aerobic run!) Then we proceeded to run 30x200 at 1500 pace. In total, the day's workout added up to about 10 miles - double what I had ever run in my life. Yet through sheer stubbornness and a desire to "fit in" with my teammates who were used to running significantly higher mileage than me, I finished out all 30 repeats. Throughout the rest of pre-season camp, I continued to complete every single workout despite the fact that I had never run that much in my life. I only realized that I was digging myself into a hole when I completely blew up at the first race of the season, struggling to the finish, nearly in tears. My body simply wasn't used to high running mileage, and something had to change. Fortunately enough, I was blessed with a coach, Keith Woodard - to this day one of the best human beings I have ever met - who was willing to work with me as an individual and bring me along slowly as my body adjusted to increases in mileage. My performances gradually improved over the course of my freshman year, my ability to run longer distances improved, and my results became more consistent. But all of this had to be balanced with my other sport - swimming.

College swimming

Club swimming

Many people wonder how I competed in three athletic seasons each year throughout college while pursuing a double major in math and physics. To be honest, it is not the balance between academics and athletics that I found most challenging. Instead, it was the balance between training for running and training for swimming that I found most difficult to strike. How much should I swim during cross-country season? And how much should I run during swim season? This was often a course in trial and error, and an experience through which I learned many valuable lessons. While I was struggling with the adjustment to higher running mileage, swimming came easier to me. In the pool, I continued to see improvement, which sometimes tipped my athletic motivation in favor of swimming over running. I would enter each swim season (November through February for me, post cross-country season) intending to run consistently over the winter, but each time I would become so hyper-focused on swimming that I would stop thinking about the benefits that just a little bit of winter running would have on my track season. And it was hard to argue with the results I achieved from placing more emphasis on swimming. My sophomore year, I had a particularly great season in which I set an individual school record in the 100 breast and was part of two medley relay school records. Interestingly enough, the track season immediately following this season of swimming was my best track season of college. But soon enough my training mistakes caught up with me, and my sophomore track season would turn out to be my last-ever full track season.

100 breast school record

So very stylish

In the water on the way to a 400 medley relay school record

Looking back, since I had never before experienced a running-related injury, I must have thought I was invincible. But how could I expect to stay healthy if I only ran a handful of times all winter and then jumped back into hard track workouts way too quickly post swim season? This was a recipe for injury, and my body finally succumbed to it during my junior year when my track season was halted due to a metatarsal stress fracture in my left foot. Subsequently, I returned to the pool and put in huge swim mileage with my club team throughout the summer. It was at this point that I actually began to feel burned out from swimming. I stopped enjoying workouts, and felt like I had achieved everything I could - or everything I had ever wanted to - as a swimmer. Coupled with disappointment from losing the previous track season, this led me to quit swimming my senior year of college to focus on running.

Steeple race face

Post-steeple 4x400 race face

In hindsight, I believe that deep down, I knew this decision would probably backfire. I've seen signs my entire life that I'm a better runner when I swim. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd never given running a full shot, so I had to give it a try. Thus, I did not swim throughout my entire senior cross-country season, instead running full-time and putting in my highest mileage weeks ever, which topped out at about 50 miles. I ended up having a solid season, but it was nothing spectacular - a very small improvement over my junior year. Ultimately, the consistent high mileage caught up with me, and I felt a pain in my lower left leg soon before the last race of the season. This went undiagnosed all winter, and turned out to be a tibial stress fracture. Once this injury had been rehabilitated, I made the same mistake that had caused my first injury - jumped back into track training way too quickly - and ended up with another stress fracture in my foot the week before the conference championships. Hence I finished my college track career by hobbling through the conference championship steeple race with a broken bone in my foot.

I cannot describe how huge of a blow these injuries were - one right after the other, coupled with the end of my 15-year-long competitive swimming career. I began to lose my identity as an athlete, as well as any hope that I would be able to train and compete at a high level ever again. It seemed that no matter what I did, I always ended up injured. The pain of losing my senior track season was unbearable, and caused me to sink into a depression of sorts, which persisted throughout the following year as my training was highly constrained by a coursework-intensive master's program at the University of Washington. Throughout that year, I continued to stay out of the water, and I ran 20 or 30 minutes only a couple times a week; that is, until I was sidelined by a case of plantar fasciitis, which forced me onto the elliptical and spin bike for several months. I also lifted weights 2-3 times a week to keep some meat on my bones, but essentially, I entirely de-trained. Moreover, I felt incredibly isolated because this was the first time in nearly 20 years that I hadn't been part of a team. It was not a happy time for me. But school was my priority, and I accepted that athletics should be put on the back burner, especially to give me time to recover from two years of repetitive injuries.

Master of Applied Mathematics!

In hindsight, taking a year off from hard training was the best thing I could have done for my body, and for my motivation as an athlete. When I moved to Boulder in the summer of 2016 to pursue my PhD, I felt fresh and ready to start training again on my own terms, in a way I knew would keep my body happy and healthy: the multisport way. Once again, I began alternating swimming and running workouts. While swimming at CU Boulder's student rec center one day, a wealth of national championship banners - belonging to the CU triathlon team - caught my eye. I also happened to stumble across an event called the Stroke & Stride - a summer aquathlon (swim-run race, or triathlon minus the bike) series held at the Boulder Reservoir. On a whim, I rented a wetsuit, taught myself how to sight in open water via YouTube, got over my fear of not being able to see the bottom, and went for it. And I had a blast. Not too much later, I reached out to a grad student on the team, Dan Feeney - who would eventually become my coach - and bombarded him with questions about triathlon and how to juggle multisport training with grad school. Dan was kind enough to answer my endless questions, help me choose a TT bike off Craiglist, and ultimately, convinced me that joining the tri team would be a good thing. So I took a leap and decided to give triathlon a go.

Trying not to freak out before my first-ever open water swim

The run portion of the Stroke & Stride

Of course, this new venture was not without its challenges. Never having used cleats and having not been instructed on how to properly clip out and dismount a bike, I tipped over at a stop light like a noob and fractured my scaphoid on my first longish TT bike ride. This incident put me in a cast for 6 weeks, and confined me to riding the trainer as well as kicking entire swim practices. It certainly wasn't easy to start off on a new team as a cripple, but I was determined to give triathlon a shot, so I stuck it out and remained as involved in team practices as I could. I made tons of wonderful new friends, and even showed up at a multi-brick with a trainer so I could participate while injured (this, along with kicking 3000 yard practices, probably earned me a lot of weird looks from teammates). One of my teammates later confessed that he did not know my name, but simply knew me as "cast lady."

Riemann kept me company while I was stuck on the trainer for 6 weeks

"Cast lady"

I missed out on the fall 2016 racing season due to my wrist injury, but once my cast was removed, I was able to begin training in earnest. I regained the swim and run fitness I had lost during my year at the UW, and became more comfortable on the bike. But I (or anyone else) didn't really know what I was capable of until I had a chance to compete in my first triathlon - the Havasu Triathlon, also the Mountain Collegiate Conference Championships - in March 2017. I was incredibly intimidated and nervous (slept only 2 hours the night before the race), and felt like I had no idea what I was doing. But somehow - to everyone's surprise, especially mine - I came out of nowhere to pull out the win. A month later, I placed 5th in the Olympic distance race at collegiate nationals, qualifying for my professional license in only my second-ever triathlon and helping the CU tri team to its eight consecutive national title. My eyes were finally opened to my potential in this sport, and most importantly, I had discovered a new passion.

First-ever triathlon! (Note the shoes and socks)

Pretending to look like I know what I'm doing

National Champions! #8str8

In addition, triathlon helped me rediscover myself as a runner. The huge amount of cross-training I was putting in - as well as strong lungs from exercising at mile high, I'm sure - pushed my overall strength and my running fitness to a new level. At a team time trial in January 2017, I ran a 5K time worth sub-19 at sea level - faster than I had ever run in college. Then on a trip home for spring break, I raced a track 5K at a college meet, destroying my 5K PR by over 45 seconds with a time of 18:17. I was flabbergasted. Prior to beginning triathlon, I had essentially given up hope that I would ever again run as fast as I did in middle school. Turns out I was wrong.

This leads me to the main point in my story, which can be summed up by a Lauren Fleshman quote (read her full inspirational article here):

"You'll see girls react to a changing body in three ways: give up, ride it out, or fight against it. With 100 percent confidence, I can tell you the best choice is to ride it out. The best is yet to come."

Through all of my athletic struggles, I was lucky enough to have parents and coaches who always emphasized that my best running years - and in general, my best years as an athlete - would be in front of me. This - along with the improvements in swimming I experienced as my body changed - gave me a healthy viewpoint that many young female endurance athletes do not have, which helped me ride out even the hardest days. But it was not easy. In the moment, my lackluster running performances were so hard to accept. I was angry, hurt, and upset. I had always wanted to have a great college running career, and I knew I was capable of so much more. But I could never get there. In fact, until I found triathlon, I stopped believing I would ever get there.

Now, ten years after my early peak in running, I have finally made it to the other side. And I can say with 100% confidence that all the struggle was worth it. My body is stronger now because I allowed it to go through necessary and normal changes, and I am running faster than ever before. Moreover, triathlon has given a new and entirely different meaning to the two sports I have been involved in for most of my life. I have a fresh perspective on swimming and running, and a completely unexpected opportunity to bring these passions of mine together into one pursuit. When I moved to Boulder, I never could have imagined how important triathlon would become in my life. I essentially stumbled upon a professional triathlon career; nonetheless, I am determined to make the most of this opportunity, and I could not be more excited to see how far I can go.

In the words of UW head track coach Greg Metcalf,

"Talent does not go away. Sometimes it gets buried or suppressed, but it never goes away."

I would not have believed this a few years ago, but I certainly do now. It is not easy, but as Lauren says, the best option is to ride out the hard times. Because the best is most definitely yet to come.

And that is how I became a professional triathlete.