G4S Community Stories: Siobhan Saunders

Isn’t it interesting how when a movie is based on a real story, it suddenly seems so much better? There is something about hearing someone’s story, whether it’s inspiring, educational or just plain zany that can’t really compare to fiction, no matter what wonderland an author can dream up.

Have you spent much time over at Girls4Sports Community Pages? They’re full of inspiring stories like Siohban Saunders, a swimmer/mountain biker/surfer from California.

She’s been all over the world and has a great outlook on life.  Girls4Sport sat down with her to find out what’s new (ever heard of Ride and Tie?) and of course, get some inspiration!

Hiking at Forester Pass in the Sierra Nevadas

Tell us about your athletic achievements.

I did my first Ironman triathlon in 2006. Completed the Leadville 100 mountain bike race. Have climbed Mt. Blanc (France), Mt. Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) and Pico Orazabi (Mexico). Swam the length of Donner Lake. Won the 12 Hours of Humbolt Mountain Bike race. Won the Muir Woods Marathon, Won the Biz Johnson 1/2 Marathon Athletic.

So you like to travel! What’s your favorite vacation spot?

Anywhere tropical, with warm sandy beaches, good waves and good scuba diving would be ideal. I like to go to new places, so my new favorite place is the next place I am going.

What’s for breakfast on a typical weekend?

Steel cut oatmeal with fruit and nuts or avocado on toast.

Favorite Girls4Sport wear?

I love the long sleeve rash guards. The colors and fabrics are so original and the long sleeves are actually LONG. Yeah!

Mountain biking in St. George, Utah

What are you training for right now?

Training for the Ride and Tie World Championships. Two runners, one horse – get all three acoss the finish line. The races are typically 25 to 35 miles. This sport is a crazy amount of fun, with very warm, welcoming people. There is always camping and BBQ involved.

P.S. Anyone can go to the World Championships, so don’t be too impressed.  ; )  But we were last year’s short course (22 mile) World Champions.

Nice work! So when you’re in the water, do you prefer to swim alone or with friends?

Love to swim with friends, whether in the pool or the ocean, but especially in the ocean.

If you could choose a super power, what would it be?

That’s a tough one. It would have to be either to time travel or to be able to fly. I would love to go back in time and see all the geological formations evolve, like the Grand Canyon or Victoria Falls; see the ice age develop and recede; see the dinosaurs; etc. That would be very cool. Of course, who wouldn’t want to be able to fly?

Siobhan approaching Mount Tallac's summit

What pumps you up before you get into the water?

Being with good friends.  I love go out with a group of friends to swim, surf , boogie board, whatever, then hang out after.

Advice for someone just starting out in swimming:

Join a Master’s swimming program at a local pool. Having a coach will help you improve your stroke, making friends will keep you showing up, and a planned workout will warm you up, cool you down, and get you swimming more laps than you thought you could.

The more confident you are in a pool, the more you will enjoy ocean swimming. Find people to swim in the ocean by joining a Triathlon club or a swim club. Find out where in your community people open water swim and hang out there; there are usually  morning time, lunch time and afterwork regulars you can hook up with. Swimmers are very approachable people, so don’t be afraid to ask someone if you can tag along.

Bicycle Touring along the Danube River in
Austria

Anything else you’d like to tell us?

Just get out and do it.  Don’t worry if you’re not a star.  It’s about who shows up.  If you show up, you’re a winner.

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Thanks for sharing your photos, time and insight with us, Siobhan! We appreciate it.

You can read more about Siobhan and more stories like hers in the Girls4Sport Community pages. What inspired you about this story? Do you have one you’d like to share? Tell us in the comments!

(Showing) Less Is More

BY LEANNE SALANDRO

When people ask me what I do for a living, they are often surprised to hear that I design and market clothing, specifically active wear providing a wide range of coverage for women. For the most part, we are in the market to offer more coverage versus less. You could say we sort of specialize in modesty.

First of all, people are surprised that I’m an everyday kind of person who designs clothes. It’s more of a high-dollar, fashion runway, Paris, Milan, big label occupation in most imaginations. For me, it’s not quite that glamorous. Enjoyable, but not glamorous.

After that, the surprise lingers around the fact that I would work hard on something involving the word “modesty” especially where the word “fashion” is concerned. People are often operating under the usually false misconception that confident women who are proud of their bodies want to show it off and wear revealing “sexy” outfits.

That may be true for some but, when you are engaged in a truly active endeavor like triathlon, surfing, windsurfing, kiteboarding, kayaking, etc. the last thing on your mind in the heat of the moment is, “do these shorts make my butt look too big”?

Sure, most of us like to look our best as much as possible but most female athletes are primarily concerned about actively enjoying or competing in their chosen sport comfortably. Performance is the priority, not the “hey, check me out” factor. Let’s face it, a little extra coverage actually keeps things nicely covered during rigorous activity and prevents impromptu peep shows of any, um, feminine assets. Furthermore, even the most gorgeously toned back and shoulders will suffer a scorching burn if unprotected all day in the sun kitesurfing. Not fun. Not pretty. Sun protection is serious stuff and even more so for female athletes who spend a lot of time outdoors. Extra coverage also gives the welcome bonus of skin protection.

The caveat here is we really do still want to look good and all this talk of modesty, serious sun protection and coverage engineered to fight physics starts conjuring up images of boring, utilitarian, “un-fun” fashion. Luckily, being too exposed was the “a-ha” moment for a fashion-loving person like myself.

After a particularly chilly surf session with my business partner Kim, we were changing out of our wetsuits and trying to preserve some modesty as we simultaneously wrangled neoprene and large towels with our stiff, cold fingers. We noticed some perv’ on a bicycle who kept riding back and forth past our vehicle… we’re talking five, maybe six, times obviously trying to catch a glimpse of something should a towel slip. I felt an emotional combo of anger and great amusement. How desperate do you have to be to catch a glimpse of the female form so that you’re compelled to ride your bike repeatedly past two, drenched, rumpled, middle-aged chicks struggling out of wetsuits? I can assure you that we were no visions of sexual loveliness as we were trying to get out of neoprene and into some warm, dry clothes. But I digress…

I decided that bottoms designed to coordinate with rashguards would be so great. That way, I could strip off my wetsuit and be covered. No need to fuss with towels! Just unzip and go about my business. Let’s go one step further and make such an ensemble fun and interesting.

In a nutshell, showing a little less really is more and it’s what we aim to deliver at Girls4Sport. Less revealing garments that provide more for the women wearing them. You get the benefits of sun protection and coverage, and (much to the chagrin of peep-tom cyclists everywhere) you also get the added allure of leaving a little something to the imagination.

Triathlon Training: How to Balance it All

BY BROOKE TVERMOES

Girls4Sport triathlete Brooke Tvermoes

In today’s world of overbooked schedules and instant communication, how can we find the time to escape it all for a few hours each day? This has been the very question that I have been struggling to answer for the past few years. My name is Brooke Tvermoes, and I am a post doc at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), as well as a professional triathlete. This year is my first as a professional triathlete and finding the time to get in the training I need, while still pursuing my research interests in molecular toxicology, and finding time for my family and friends has been a continual struggle. I have to admit, I end up most days wishing there were just a few more hours in the day, and often times I find myself barely able to juggle all the balls I have in the air. But at the end of the day, when I lay to sleep, and I can finally take a deep breath and reflect on my day and my life – I know I am happy and not just a little happy, but that deep down content happy. I love every aspect of my life, and wouldn’t want to give up any part of it, no matter how crazy it may get at times.

So, by no means do I have it all figured out – how to balance family, work, and my love for triathlons – but I have found a few tricks that help me keep some balance in my life. Here are a few things that work for me:

1. Be organized. Have a schedule and stick to it! The most important thing for me is a schedule – I have a routine and I stick with it. If I have a morning swim scheduled before work and a ride after work then that’s what I do. You can not miss a practice and make it up later – it just doesn’t work that way and I have unfortunately had to learn that lesson more than once. Also, having a schedule allows you to go into autopilot and you know exactly what you are going to do each day. It takes too much time to figure out your day that morning once you’ve already gotten to work.

2. Be creative with your workouts and your time. I try not to waste any time during the day – it’s too valuable. There’s nothing wrong with trying to squeeze in a quick one hour swim before work, as long as you can get to bed at a reasonable time the night before. Frequently, I’ll sneak in a run during my lunch break and then just have lunch at my desk afterward. Girls4Sport sportswear is perfect for this because their workout clothes are so cute I feel comfortable wearing them at work, and the fabric is so absorbent I can workout and not get too nasty. In the evenings when most people are watching TV after work, I am out riding my bike. When you start your day, know what time you want to end your day and when that time comes, you just have to walk away from your computer, put the iphone down, and get out there. There is always something else that can be done at work – it’s never ending, especially if you have a research job like mine. But science, like most jobs, will be there tomorrow. My evening workouts have by far become my favorite part of the day. It’s a great time for me to think about the day (if I want to) or just ride and run as hard as I can so I can forget about the day; either way this is my time.

3. Try to plan workouts with friends. I always try to have a couple of workouts during the week that I am doing with friends. I find this to be beneficial for several reasons. First, it’s much harder to back out of a work out when you have committed to meeting up with someone else. Also, it’s fun to be with friends – they can make you smile and laugh when you least expect it. In addition, nothing strengthens a friendship more than bonding over a tough workout together. Friends also provide the extra motivation to push yourself on days you lack motivation. Last but not least, working out with your friends is a great way to hang out with your friends!!

4. Don’t over commit yourself. This is something that I continually struggle with. Just because there are 24 hours in a day does not mean that you can nor should book every one of those 24 hours. Recovery and sleep are a very important part of training. You need to prioritize and keeping a balance in your priorities can be tricky at times. In the off season, family and friends absolutely get priority, in the building phase of my season my priorities shift some, but the last few months before a big race my priority is racing and training – dinner with friends are an absolute must but late nights on the weekends are out, at least for a little while.

5. Have a good support group. I don’t think any of this would be possible without the love and support of my husband and family. Training for an Ironman takes a lot of time and there is no way around that, but having the support and understanding of the time commitment from my family and friends is invaluable. Riding bikes with my husband is one of my absolute favorite things to do – this has become our time together and I love it.

I am also very thankful for the support from my sponsors like Girls4Sport. Girls4Sport provides me with some fantastic workout clothes that are both cute and comfortable! Their support and belief in me, allows me to pursue my dream of being a professional triathlete and I am eternally grateful for that.

If you’re thinking about doing your first triathlon, I say go for it!! Figure out what’s important to you and then make time to do it. I think Dr. Seus said it best: “Life is a great balancing act … And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed).”

Brooke Tvermoes is a professional triathlete sponsored by Girls4Sport and a post doc at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina.