They Call Me Seashell

  I came for the salt but stayed for the family. As we move into the new year with new goals, a new lease on priorities, and a renewed fire inside to get back to doing things we love, this year I decided to return to the BASE Performance race team for a number of reasons.  I joined BASE back in 2017 after trying out the BASE salts and having my hiney saved on a long hot run.  I reached out to Matt Miller, the owner of BASE, and told him how grateful I was for his product.  He replied to me and mentioned that they have an ambassador team and if I would like to apply he could provide me the link.  So I did and the rest was history! I took 3 years off  racing for BASE as I because a brand ambassador for a Women's only race team, but I always stayed connected with Matt and the BASE family as a whole.   Over the last 2 years, I have doubled down my support of BASE and Matt specifically because of the open heart and arms that Matt and his wife Lauralee ...

  I went from saying to myself that I would never be able to do an Ironman, to having KONA Legacy goals.  Ironman had become such an integral part of who I was; not by definition rather by lifestyle, by showing me that I am worthy and able, that anything is possible if you put your mind and body to it.  The truth is that I have been struggling the past few years, ever since I was injured in 2019 at IMTX.  The medical DNF hit me in a way that I was not expecting. Until that point, my only DNF ever was my first Marathon where I was battling a mental demon and had allowed external influences to cast doubt and mental exhaustion upon me.   I had promised myself that I would never DNF again.  You know what they say:  never say never!  I was so excited to toe the start line again later that year at IMFL, however, going into the race I was injured with a hip/glute issue and my fears of falling short of time became a reality when I had yet another med...

I remember that first day back from Panama City Beach in 2012, standing in the elevator at work a person in my building noticed my IM Florida Finishers jacket. He asked me, "So, what was the hardest part?" while pointing to my jacket. I turned to him, smiled, and replied "Signing up." I never would have been wearing that jacket if I did not start.  And believe me when I say that it takes the most courage to sign that piece of paper and hand over your $700+ non-refundable entry fee. Do you know why there are so few Ironman finishers in the world?  At IM Florida in 2012, they celebrated the 500,000th individual finisher of the Ironman races. That is a lot of people in general, but that is over multiple races world-wide in all of the then 30 years of the branded event.  The reason why it took 30 years to hit half a million Ironman finishers is simple.   The fear of the unknown. If I look over what I personally overcame to find that courage, we must rewind even fur...

Every year around this time, I ask my teammates to come up with a power word (or small 1 to 2 word mantra) for the year ahead. I thought it would be fun to see what word you are pulled towards when you think of 2021... the word you can hold onto to dig deeper, or stay the course when things get difficult. My words in the past have been FEARLESS, RELENTLESS, BEASTMODE... and I realized that for me, those words ended up almost hurting me more than motivating or inspiring me when when things started to hit the fan and I had to do some soul searching. I was not feeling fearless, relentless, and certainly was not in beast mode... and the words just did no good for me. I almost felt like I was weak just because I could not rise up to the level of my power word. We already have so much stress in our lives... why add more to it? A power word is meant to inspire, to lift up and the words that I had chosen in the past certainly could do that for the right person in the right headspace... but for...

Am I finishing... or starting?

This is something big for me - I am very excited for the 2019 season!  I have not been THIS excited for a year in my entire time of being a triathlete, including the year I trained for my first IM in 2012.  This year is very special for me because of so much change.  For the first time in my triathlon life I am without a local triathlon club.  That feels so weird to me but I feel that it will free up my interests to focus on my outreach initiative.  I am continuing to be a Collective Beat member in 2019 and now officially am a Coeur Ambassador *squeeeeeeee*   Words cannot describe the joy in my heart.  Through my Ambassadorship with Coeur,  I strive to empower women to take a chance on themselves and go for their goals!   I have loved Coeur products and the company for years, and I am super blessed and beyond words of gratitude that I made the team this year. #teamtiger This year I am focusing on slow trans...

I went back to my Dr last night to review my final test results and got the all clear on resuming normal training life as long as I keep on making the modifications I am to my lifestyle and monitor my BP keeping an eye on it. I have one happy heart and now with my Boston Heart Diagnostics results in hand, I am very aware of where I need to focus my lifestyle efforts. If you have never heard of the Boston Heart test, it is a blood work diagnostic which reviews your risks for heart disease and assesses your overall heart health identifying specific areas in which you can improve your markers.  It is also very impressive and paints a wonderful picture of your risk for heart disease. I chatted with my coach today and we are on track for a stellar rest of the training cycle to IMFL in November.  I am one happy Seashell! With this set back, I am starting a little late in my training but being only 7 weeks in I have more time in front of me than behind me which is a good t...

When I compare my self of today to my self of 2012, when I was in peak condition, I feel like I have failed myself.  I promised myself back then that I would never be back here - unfit, overweight and unhappy in my body. Yet, here I am - unfit, overweight and unhappy in my body - and apparently my body is not terribly happy with me either. At this point I would normally hide myself from pictures and people.  However not now.  I am accepting the me of today, and am putting myself out there for the entire world to see, to bare witness on my transformation and to hopefully continue to inspire others to grab a hold of their health and take ownership of their lives again. Exiting the swim - HOLY JELLYFISH!!! Husband Mike and the other half of Team Mathletes really enjoying the ride Running to the finish - it was HOT, HUMID and I negative split the run by executing smart! Team Mathletes - 40 minute 70.3 relay PR!  BOOM! I am on a continual jour...

I had a phone call with my coach, Coach P over at Endurance Nation last October and we set forth a POA to get me back on track. Patrick is the tri-whisperer and as far as I am concerned the best there is.  He gets it on such a deep level, a psychological level not just the physical. He get how to COACH not just preach or plan. While my goals are many for the coming year, the real achievement will not rest on a timing mat at the end of some long day of self-propelled motion. The real achievement lies in having the courage to even start.  In my discussion with Coach we discussed milestones for this first phase of the plan. I have literally never started a year of training with such pure motivation.  I feel like having my sister-in-law, husband, and brother-in-law training for the same races it helps that my whole family gets me and I can do this without sacraficing time with them because we are in it together. This especially rings true for time with my husband....

The making of a habit, they say, is about 30 days.  I have been waking up early (between 5am and 5:30am) and meeting a friend at the gym nearly every day for the past month plus, and I must say it is now just sort of habit that I wake up in the 5am hour.  Was it easy?  Nope.  Did it happen over night?  Not even close.  It has taken and still takes every single one of those days.   I have struggled with being a morning workout person for years, but it is key for my consistency.  Once I find myself back in the habit, things just sort of gel.  The struggle has been that I would stay up too late and not be prepared to get out the door so I end up falling behind schedule and just saying to heck with it, hit snooze and wake up in a rush to make it to work. Forget the after work workout - that never happens either due to mental fatigue or physical fatigue.  I know that morning workouts sound like a dream for some and a nightmare for ...

Starting over is something that I literally seem to do all the time.  Basically, starting over looks like me... every single day.  Re-learning how to get up in the morning to swim/bike/run, re-learning how to go to bed at a reasonable hour, re-learning how to fuel and prep and plan.  Starting over looks very similar in triathlon to anything else in life.  There is a period of awkwardness, doubt, and then the realization that we can do it because, hello, we have done it before. But why did we do it before?  And what has changed? Sometimes when we attempt to start over, we ignore that the starting point may have moved on us.  Can we ever really start over?  Do we even want to?  I am thinking less about starting over and more about reinvention.  I had a good run as Jenniferlyn v1.0.  Now it is time for the much anticipated release of the upgrade - Jenniferlyn v2.0. I have set my race schedule, recruited my family to race with ...

I am returning from a long hiatus in the sport and I sit here thinking... wow. This is so much more difficult that I remember it being. And I do not mean it in a sarcastic funny way.. I mean that the struggle for me is real. This is going to be a hard fought return. However, I have the opportunity to see this as a re-do. When I left the sport to focus on my personal development I was at an all time high for me. Happy Ironman finisher, 2015 TeamUSA Long Course World Championship Qualifier (declined my spot due to school), and overall having the time of my life feeling fit and fabulous setting PRs all over the place. I felt and operated like some form of well oiled machine. I was in the zone and figured that I could keep doing something while in school, only that never happened. I decided to reach for the stars instead of digging myself a hole. My healthy lifestyle came to a screeching halt. Now here I sit, tired, out of shape and overweight looking at how far I have slipp...

Today I hit 'send' on my race season form with my coaching team.  I decided to do a 2-part season, one in focusing on my return to racing, the other on focus on prepping for the work ahead of me in 2018.  We will see what coach says about my part 2, however for now I have a solid race schedule for my grand re-entrance into triathlon! Triceratops Tri - June 21st Motor City Sprint - June 25th Pterodactyl Tri - July 19th Ironman70.3 Ohio (Relay) - July 30th The Bavarian Inn Experience - August 5th Swim to the Moon 5k  (Open Water Swim) - August 20th T-Rex Tri - August 23rd Detroit Marathon - October 15th It feels good to have something on the radar now, some goal to work for. The hardest part of coming back from a long time off is taking that first step knowing that it is going to hurt, that it is not going to feel the same as it once did, that it will be something I have to work at and that it is not going to be easy.  Nothing worth working for...

Thanks to Groupon I was able to grab a 10 session membership to a new Yoga studio that has been catching my eye ever since they started reno on the old Mother Fletcher's location in Ferndale. What really caught my eye on this studio from the outward appearance was the name and logo itself.  I was surprised to see the idea of plugging in when I have always heard to unplug, however I really dug on the idea of tuning in to yourself rather than tuning out the world.    I went for my first class - the Soulful class - and I was beyond impressed.  From the moment I walked into the space I felt at home and like I found a practice that resonated within myself.  The studio space, the overall vibe of Caren Paskel -  the instructor for the class and owner of EnSoul -  as well as the message conveyed and the delivery of the message all made for a very deep and meaningful experience.  I am looking forward to trying out the many different cl...

Do you remember being a child and having your parent tell you to clean your room?  Were you the child jumping up, so excited to get it clean or were you like me and would go up to your room only to sit there and play with toys or look through every single thing that you find in an effort to protest, to push back against parental control?  Some days I feel like that stubborn child but know that I cannot really get away with throwing a tantrum over the inevitable.  In order to be healthy one must adopt healthy habits and work each day on their health.  In order to be fit one must adopt the habits that lead to a state of fitness and work each day on fitness.  In order to have a clean room one must clean the room.  I also know that if I were to just jump right back into hard core training I would quit in a heartbeat.  I have been gone for so long that who I was no longer exists... I need to re-start as who I am. I need to embrace TODAY and not be re...