I am an athlete

This is composed by kritter, but posted by aritter, as kritter is removed from the technological world, hiking in Patagonia.

"Yeah, but you're a really good athlete.""This is kritter, our resident athlete.""I'm not nearly as athletic as you are"

I've gotten all of these comments in the last few months, and I'm still getting used to them. I grew up thinking of myself as fairly un-athletic. I was tiny in high school and sucked at gym class. I'm not fast in anything.

Over the years, I've come to see myself as more of an athlete. I joined a varsity team at my D-III college. I started working out at gyms, signed up for a few events (my first 2 triathlons) mostly because someone asked me to and I liked being the kind of person who said yes to a challenge. Somewhere along the way I became an athlete.
I know it's true, because:When I swim, I often outlast multiple lane-sharers

I ride my bike up a hill as fast as I can everyday to get to schoolMy idea of an awesome vacation is 6 days and 20km of open water swimming. I can sign up for a 10K, run 4 times in 5 weeks, and still finish in 1:05 with no walking.

Let’s address that last point a bit. After the Dewey Tri, I signed up for a 10K close to home. I had run it last year and had a really fun time. I had 6 weeks to train, which would have allowed me to increase my distance from the tri (5K) easily. Except I didn’t train. School, life, and a horrible cold got in the way, and I only ran 3 or 4 times, never for more than 4 miles.

The week before the race I told my mom I was feeling better and I was just going to wing it. And so I did. I thought maybe I’d have to walk part, but no, I ran the whole thing and even beat last year’s time by almost 5 minutes. Awesome. More evidence that I am turning into a pretty good little athlete. Except the next day: Not Awesome. I could barely walk. It hurt to stand up, it hurt to walk, it hurt to go up and down stairs. So I learned my lesson. If I really want to consider myself an athlete, I need to train. I can’t just sign up for things and wing them. I know I’ll keep signing up for things (especially with Sister talking me into them), and hopefully this blog will help me keep my training on track.