I’m a 26-year-old triathlete, and I live and train in sunny Brighton. I was born and bred in Kiel, in Northern Germany. As a child I spent many hours counting the tiles on the bottom of the pool, and whizzing around town on my bike just as a means to get to places. Only running and Lizzy were never friends. In fact I remember many many excuses to get out of P.E./Games just because I disliked running so much.
You may wonder how I ended up in the UK. There is no other reason than that I found myself at boarding school in Devon when I was 16 for a year abroad rather accidentally. I say accidentally because I didn’t really want to go away. But as many of the other kids at my school were going away for a year, I thought I was missing out… However, when I left Kelly College a year later I felt like I had unfinished business in this country resulting in my return to attend university in Brighton. And I’m still there 6 ½ years later!
Brighton is also were I got started in triathlon. I found the available pooltime for the swimming clubs very scarce, so I ventured into exploring other sports. I tried a healthy mix of basketball, badminton, and ballroom dancing for a while. In spring 2004 a friend entered the East Grinstead sprint triathlon, and I followed suit. By the summer I was already talking about Ironman. But I could not even run 10 km! I guess I have a slightly stubborn streak, because neither a bike crash nor a long term ankle injury could stop me from pursuing this dream. So while running is still my weakest of the three disciplines I have come a long way since then. In 2006 I finished my first Ironman, in 2008 I qualified for the world championships in Hawaii 2009, where I was 8th in the 25-29 age group.
So what do I do when I’m not obsessing about triathlon? I’m currently doing a PhD in quantum optics at the University of Sussex. Sounds clever, doesn’t it. Let’s just say it is complicated enough to make me feel decisively “unclever” on a regular basis. My day to day life involves a lot of hours in the lab, a lot of lasers, and some 40Ca+ trapped in oscillating electric fields. Oh, and a very good coffee machine!
So before this gets long and boring, I think I finish with two things: I want to thank Pat and Trigirl for giving me this amazing opportunity to promote the Trigirl brand in my 2010 campaign.
If you would like to read more about me, feel positively encouraged to visit my website at www.elisabethbrama.com.
My next blog shall come to you from sunny (hopefully) Mallorca, where I will spend 12 days chasing after the rear wheels of two male friends on their bikes.
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