Eleven Days

... is how long you have left to apply to be Evotri's 2012 member!

When I finally decided to apply to be on the Evotri team in 2010, I had less than 2 weeks before their deadline. I had wavered back and forth on whether I should throw my hat in. I had applied a couple of times in the past but hadn't made it very far in the elimination process. Plus, Steve and I were starting to talk about starting a family, and I was sure they wouldn't want someone who was hoping to be knocked up soon. My desire to be on the team got the best of me, though, and I decided the only things I had to lose were a couple of hours of my time and a small piece of my pride if they decided to pass over me again.

I had known of Evotri from WIBA weekends in the past (I was one of the "original" members of WIBA back in 2006 before Evotri had been started). I had gotten the opportunity to race alongside some of the members at Ironman Wisconsin and Steelhead 70.3 and had realized what a great group of people they are. They are so down-to-earth and fun at the same time. There never seemed to be a shortage of laughs around them! I was worried that they wouldn't want to pick me. There are some crazy speedsters on the team. The current count is that JP, Michelle, and Chris have all done Kona - all since joining the team. I'll likely never earn a slot to Kona. Sara seems to get faster after each kid she's had. Rob often beats pros out of the water. Stu has posted some pretty wicked times and is now announcing for the Rev3 Series - how cool is that? Oh, and Charlie BQ'd shortly after joining the team. I told them about my passion for the sport. I told them that I wouldn't be the fastest one on the team by any stretch of the imagination, but I would LOVE to find out what the amazing gear that the sponsors were offering could do for me. In my first summer on the team, my Power Tap, my Zipp wheels, and 3 months of coaching helped me to realize a 70.3 PR. I finally broke 6 hours, and for me, that's huge. Now that I have my new QR bike and wetsuit, I am ready to GO for this summer's race season.

In the process of applying, I told the team about my plans to start a family. I wanted to make sure they knew what they'd be getting in me. They told me they were looking for somebody that wanted to make a long-term commitment to the team and that balancing triathlon and the rest of life is something that they all strive to do. Now I look to them as role models as I learn to continue triathlon in my new life as a mom.

I love Evotri's mission. I have been trying to give back to this sport since I found it in 2004 and have coaxed many friends and former strangers to all sorts of finish lines. I thought that this would be a perfect way for me to continue to give back. When they called to tell me that they'd chosen me to be the newest member of Evotri, I was so excited that I couldn't stop shaking! I had a smile on my face for weeks. It has been a true blessing to get to know my teammates better, and the sponsorship really can't be beat.

We've had so many great applications already, and I can't tell you how pumped I am to meet our newest member. If you're still thinking about applying, it's not too late! Putting together a video and envisioning next year's racing season may be the perfect way to work off your Holiday food coma.

The Beginning

As part of Evotri, we were all asked to write how we got into this sport. It's a great look back to where we've each come from and to hopefully encourage any potential team members that we've all started somewhere, even JP, who recently WON an iron distance triathlon, and Rural Girl, who recently crushed her 3:30 marathon goal. My story starts with a boy...

I had been dating Steve for 2 years by the time we went off to college. We were high school sweethearts but had decided to go to seperate colleges. He was going to a small art school, and I was at a different university. As luck would have it, those schools were just under 4 miles apart. I had run cross country and track my last 2 years of high school and had loved it. Though I was definitely a middle-of-the-road runner, I loved that the more work I put into it, the more I would get out of it. They were sports where "favortism" didn't really come into play. The numbers spoke for themselves. If you could post them, you were on the roster. I loved the objectivity of it. I still ran when I went off to college, but I had decided that science majors and college sports didn't mix. I really missed the team enviornment, but I kept running for fun. On Fridays, Steve worked in the art gallery at his school. I used these days as my long run days. I would run the 4 miles down to see him and the 4 miles back. One day, I added a couple of miles. The next week, I added one more. The day I ran 16 miles, I decided I would sign up for my first marathon.

By the summer of 2003, I had run 3 and was training for my 4th marathon. I was sitting in my house and just happened to turn on the TV one Sunday. They were airing the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon on TV, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Though I had been running, I hadn’t given triathlons much thought. After watching the program, I vowed that I would be there in 2004 to race the Olympic distance race. I signed up a couple of months later and started training. It wasn’t exactly easy. I had never met anyone who had done a triathlon, so I basically learned all I could from books (I had quite the library of tri books by then). Wouldn’t you know…after all that training, my timing chip fell off my ankle during the swim. I managed to screw up my watch’s lap function during T1, so I don’t really have any idea what any of my splits were. I also lost all of my nutrition during the bike, which resulted in me almost losing my cookies at the end of the race. During that first tri, I thought about Ironman. Oddly enough, it was the M dot tatoo on a woman's right thigh that planted that seed. I saw it when I was on the run, and I thought to myself, I could do that someday. After that first race, I was hooked. I knew that more races were in my future, and in 2006, I realized my Ironman dream for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history!