Upcoming Races

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Alexandra Michel

HONOLULU, Hawaii

I short, I am a mother, a veteran, the spouse to an active duty soldier, a midwife, and also have a PhD. I am currently not working (unfortunately), so I try to keep busy with traveling. Another hobby of mine is photography. I volunteer for an organization called wear blue: run to remember. The purpose of this organization is to honor the service and sacrifice of the American military. I am fiercely protective of my patients even if they are no longer my patients. As a matter of fact, I am fiercely supportive of women rights (especially in Women's Health Care) in general. I also am that midwife that tells patients to go and work out. Nothing good ever came from sitting on a couch.

Every time I walk up to the bike trainer I am thinking why am I doing this to myself. Here we are, weeks into a pandemic, pools (rightfully so) closed, gyms (rightfully so) closed, and group activities severely limited. I was a runner with a really bad back. I needed long runs to manage my mental health. It also allowed me to have that piece of chocolate. Anyways, I decided I had to change something and turning to triathlon forced me to make a change and become a more complete athlete. That brings me to today. I can still run outside. I won't bike outside to avoid the (remote) possibility of a crash. Even though the local areas is not hard hit by COVID19 I will be darned to use of medical resources and potentially put my peers into an even worse situation. And I feel that years of work to become a swimmer are disintegrating. I may not be a swimmer, I may not ride outside, but I am still a runner and by just sticking with the program I managed to run my fastest mile in over 20 years and after a lot of work my back injury is finally under control. Those are my little sunny rays breaking through the clouds. I am a stronger today than I was yesterday, because of triathlons. Triathlon did that for me.