The Standard Introduction...My name is Maria and I'm a triathlete.

After reading blogs daily I’ve finally caught “blog fever” and decided to start my own blog, officially making me a triathlete in the 21st century. Although I’ve gone back and forth about starting one, my girlfriend seems to think it would be a good idea, so I’ll give it a go. The New Year is here and now is the time to start something new. Consider this my introduction!

About me as a student: I’m a full time graduate student in a Criminology program. Criminology is the study of patterns and behaviors concerning crime, it’s nothing you’ve seen on TV and it’s really boring to a lot of people. I also have a part time job doing research with some professors at the university. I’ve started my thesis which is about sentencing disparities between the genders for property crimes. Meaning, do women receive lighter sentences than men when they commit the same property crime. I really enjoy the research aspect of the criminal justice area and will hopefully continue to do research in the future.

Now, about me as a triathlete: My birthday is in the summer and on my birthday I suffered a mid-mid life crisis (or a quarter life crisis). I don’t really know what happened, but I was at work and then all the sudden I was thinking that I hadn’t really done anything meaningful in my life. I was staring at the magazines at the store and the Triathlete magazine caught my eye and I thought “I could do that” and thus my journey as a new triathlete began. I did three sprints during the second half of the 2008 season and am on my way training for Olympic distances for next season to continue to challenge myself. I come from swimming background and my family is big on biking so needless to say that my weak area is the run. Actually, I hate running and even after months of training, I still hate running. My body is not built for running and it lets me know that quite often. But I'm really enjoying my training and learning my way around the multi-sport lifestyle.

So that is my life story in a short entry, I promise this will be the only boring entry here; I don’t like writing anything that I wouldn’t like reading. I figured I would use this blog to “track” my training as a “back of the pack” Athena triathlete. Don't expect to see super fast times in my training, my reason for becoming a triathlete is to challenge myself but to have fun. I’m doing this for me and you are welcome to come along for the ride! It should be a good one! Happy New Year!