About Me

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Boulder, CO, United States
From Minnesota to Maine to the sunny land of Boulder, CO, I have been competing as an athlete all my life and been working as massage therapist for six years now. Helping athletes with greater recovery, bounce back from injury faster, and helping one's body perform at it's best is what I aim to do. My love for sport, training and helping a body feel good and perform at it's best has driven me into a career in massage therapy. I strive for nothing less than the best...let me help you reach greater heights.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Testing week


Last week was a busy one. Starting on Wednesday we had a five day team testing and orientation. Our tests included a 3000 meter run, (ouch), followed by a 400 meter run, (OUCH!), strength endurance/max testing and a VO2 Max test ski walking on the treadmill at UMPI. The orientation included everything from team protocol to team building, talks on nutrition, (thank you Dr. Glazer), sports psych, (thank you Sarah Kay), team and individual goals, training techniques and even a little relaxation and yoga practice. We through it all into five days. And we even finished off the week with a 5km fun run at the S.W. Collins 5km here in Caribou.
While these days were quite long, I found them to be very productive and really set the tone to something great for this team and the year ahead. All the athlete, biatletes and Nordic, did everything together, which hasn't ever really happened in the past. I am excited to see this cohesion develop further as our season rolls forward through the colder months.
One of the activities I found to be the most rewarding was talking about goals, short term, long term, performance and outcome. We came up with a great list for our entire team and along with everyone workout out their own personal goals as well. Some of us shared a few with the group while other kept more to them self. It is a hard thing to do, sharing a goal with a bunch of your peers. We are all teammates but in our sports we are also competitors. You are putting yourself out there by stating what your aspirations are. The harder the goal the greater the challenge in reaching it, and the tougher it is to state that goal out loud. This is something I have often struggled with in the past. After competing for nearly 15 year in this sport I understand that I need to state my goals out loud and let everyone know what it is I am working towards, at the risk of being judged, laughed at or who knows what else. I have to do this to help myself start believing and knowing I can accomplish these things. And really who is anyone else to make any judgement on what I can or can't accomplish in sport or life. It's all up to me in the end. I am the only person who can get in my own way of reaching those goals that I set out for myself. And I am doing to do my very best to stay out of the way!

World Championship Team 2012, here I come!

cheers, BA

photos from the VO2Max test at Univeristy of Maine in Presque Isle. Thanks to Sue Beaudet for helping out with this. This pictures pretty much sums it up, a very blurry experience...

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