yo yo yo I’m sonja

What’s up? Hi! Welcome! You don’t know me! But you found your way here, that’s cool. I dig it. This whole blog has chronicled my life so it’s kinda hard to just be like…this is me in one page! But, it seems like you want to know the greatest hits, so okay, okay, let’s do this.

top 10 Greatest Hits of Sonja:

1) Dude, I’m a mom. I know right, they let anyone do this job! And… my daughter Annie is AMAZING. She’s smart, and adventurous, and happy all the time, even though she’s a teenager. I wake up every day and try to do & be my best for her, she completes me!

2) Adventure! For as long as I can remember there has been the need to adventure in my bones. It started out as climbing trees and exploring my neighborhood with my dog in tow and has since become the way I move in the world. I love to travel and am constantly delighted by the amazing wonders this world has to offer.

3) Cali Baby! In 2016 I moved from Denver to a tiny town called Los Osos on the central coast of California because I watched the movie Finding Dory and it was all about her going home, and home was here. There may be a little more to the story, but that really is the bulk of it.

4) I spent 10 years living and breathing Ironman Triathlons. I did 18 of them (the full 140.6 kind) and oodles of the halvsy ones (70.3) and it was all because one of my coaches wrote a comment on my blog in 2010 saying he thought I could win my age group at Kona, the Ironman World Championships. I was a darn good triathlete, I never turned professional, but I was at the top of the amateur ranks and still have the female course record for amateurs at Ironman Arizona… 9:35 baby!

5) In 2014 after 5 years of trying I got second in my age group at Kona which is different than first in that it’s like one 3” inch step down on the podium, and my wooden bowl was a bit smaller than Amy’s, and I didn’t get a fancy world champion bike jersey…but other than that, kinda the same. And that was both amazing and really hard at the same time. It changed my life in ways that are still reverberating all over.

6) I coached Ironman athletes starting in 2011 and continued for the better part of my time in the sport, helping many athletes to realize their dreams of becoming an Ironman. It was really hard work, and really long hours, and not much pay, but also intensely rewarding, and taught me a lot about people, and what motivates them… and what doesn’t. I also started a coaching company in 2015 called Rising Tide Triathlon Coaching where I tried to play on a much BIGGER level from an entrepreneur point of view and that company closed in 2017 because of #7…

7) In 2017 I experienced a “mental health event” that kinda almost took me out in a big way. Some call it a nervous breakdown or a major depressive episode, although those feel like old terms. It meant panic attacks, depression, suicidal thoughts and a period of intense mental distress where I was unable to function in my everyday life. It was dark, and deep, and it felt like it went on for forever and ever… and ever… and ever. But I got a lot of help and I made my way to the surface again. I’m finding new ways to talk about it every day and hope I can continue to be bold enough to share more.

8) I backpacked the John Muir Trail in the summer of 2018 with my daughter Annie, just her and I! It was insane and took us 18 days. She was 12 at the time, and I flipping loved all of it. My trail name was Cranberry (because I got a UTI) and Annies was Chipmunk, but in retrospect it should have been Starburst because that’s what she pretty much lived on out there. I felt alive out there and I realized I was going to be able to thrive in life again.

9) in 2019 I did this crazy adventure race in Fiji that was made into a TV show and aired on Amazon Prime in 2020. It’s called The Worlds Toughest Race, EcoChallenge Fiji and entailed trekking, climbing, mountain biking, outrigger canoeing, sailing, whitewater rafting, SUPing (and more) for 10 days straight in teams of 4 racers and 1 support person. I felt called to do the race in my bones and it was the biggest adventure of my life to date. It challenged me and took me to my knees many times, but after the experience I know a lot more about who I am, what I’m about, and how I want to spend my time here including who I want to help.

10) I so deeply love to write. I have a degree in Pure Mathematics and I was never a strong writer growing up but I love to have adventures and I love to tell stories. I have no formal writing education, just my open heart, my vulnerability, and my love for typing out my experiences. I get scared sometimes that people will be mean to me online, or not respect my boundaries, but I’m pushing myself to show up anyways, and rely on the tools I have built to move on from challenging times. I’ve written most of a memoir, but I can’t figure out how to end it. The story continues!

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it."—Maya Angelou