Jen Amaral

Sport is a passion of mine! I have been involved in sport for as long as I can remember. As a young child I danced and played soccer. I just wasn’t cut out to dance and I was more interested in picking flowers in the soccer field than I was in chasing the ball. Having swum in backyard pools as a small child I was eager to start swimming lessons at the age of six and quickly found myself hooked on the sport. Throughout my school years I pulled myself out of bed at 4:30 every morning to spend countless hours swimming back and forth above a black line in the pool, but I loved it! I tried to play school sports (volleyball, basketball, soccer) but coordination just wasn’t my thing. I stuck to swimming! I went on to win many provincial championships, earn Junior National titles, race in the pool for the Canadian Junior National Tour Team and at the World Open Water Swimming Championships. I was an amazing adventure that was unfortunately cut short by injury.

Looking for a new adventure I decided to give triathlon a go in university. I competed in my first triathlon in 2003. The story of my first triathlon is pretty textbook: borrow a mountain bike, get passed by 100s of people flying by on their road bikes, complete a full clothing change in transition, fall in love with the sport!

Wanting to get serious I saved up my pennies while working 3 jobs and bought my first road bike. I quickly progressed in the sport and not long after that very first I found myself racing internationally and representing Canada at the U23 World Champs in Gamagori, Japan.

In 2007 I decided that draft-legal racing was not for me and decided to toe the line at my very first half ironman. Since then I’ve been focusing mainly on the half ironman distance, training and racing domestically.

In 2012 I will take on a new challenge – ironman. While balancing work, training and life I will take that step that so many age group athletes have done before…complete my first ironman.