A bit about Samantha

I’m Samantha Brennan, philosopher, parent, and adult-onset athlete.

I like that I have no high school glory days to live up to.

My main sport is cycling, both road and track and I love to ride and race. Along the way I’ve also done some running and a few triathlons, though my swimming could use some improvement and running has given me stress fractures.

I also  like to throw large men around while wearing white robes, that is to say that I’m a serious student of Aikido. It’s a beautiful martial art really and I wish I were better at it. I’ve been lifting weights since I took a PE course in grad school called “The Fundamentals of Weight Training.”

These days I’m loving Crossfit for its high intensity, high energy workouts. I play soccer and cross country ski for fun. I love hot yoga in the winter.  I’m an above average size person who continually struggles with our society’s expectation that all athletes look like fitness models and that all fat women aren’t active.

I’d like to lose weight, mostly to make it up hills faster and to avoid injury, but I’m not prepared to sacrifice performance in either the strength or speed department to do it.  I also worry a lot about how realistic weight loss is as a goal given the stats on dieting and success and for the most part, I try to focus on fitness.

I’ve also recently started to think about sport as a philosopher. I blog occasionally at Philosophy of Sport, http://philosophyandsports.blogspot.ca/, and I’m starting to write a bit in the area. Hard to spend that much time on the bike and not, really.