I Conquered My Fears – Sarah Toth Johnson

I have always been drawn to sports and movement since I was able to walk! My father enrolled me in gymnastics at age 7 to keep me from bouncing off the furniture and getting hurt. After my collegiate career as a performing acrobatic flyer in the Acro-Airs team was over I traveled the world. I also performed alongside many big acts and NBA arena halftimes. When those ended, my coach and now husband urged me to try endurance sports.

I Conquered My Fears

There is such a learning curve to triathlon even for people who love swimming, biking, and running! Training five days a week as a gymnast made me comfortable with the daily fitness grind. It allowed me to develop an ability to push through when circumstances were not ideal. I love the challenge of pushing my body to see what it’s capable of and leaning into that fear. As someone who did not grow up loving to swim, my first all-woman’s sprint race was terrifying! I dropped all my nutrition and wasn’t sure I’d even be able to finish. My times were really quite slow. Despite that I had the feeling of having conquered several of my fears.  I was able to overcome swimming, racing without food, and being a vulnerable newbie. That accomplishment gave me a high that I still find after every endurance event.

Coaching, Racing and Pregnancy

The last decade I’ve been privileged to move into a coaching role with my former team and bring some of the work ethic and empowerment to new athletes while pursuing my own endurance goals. The last year I’ve had a son and walked that journey of trying to have a fit and safe pregnancy and return to the sport I love while my body heals and finds new purpose as a mama. The future season is exciting because while I did race last year, 6 months after my son was born, I now feel ready to go full out at several Sprint, Olympic, 70.3 and cycling endurance races.

As a first year member to the I Race Like A Girl and IRLAG Zwift racing teams, I’m really motivated to have solid results and hopefully set someone up to do their first event or try something scary they didn’t think was possible.