Hi everyone, my name is Andrea and I’m a new Viceroys member!  I was born and grew up in Australia (but please don’t hold that against me!) and moved to England in May 2004.  I originally only came over for 18 months, but somehow 10 years later I’m still here – it must be the weather that keeps me here!

I was an active kid growing up playing various sports with cricket (so yes you now have someone to hurl abuse at come the next Ashes!) and netball being the favourites. Come university years though at the back end of the 90’s, exercise gave way for study and it wasn’t really until 2007 when I ended up working overseas at a military base that I got back into exercising again, as there wasn’t really much to do outside of work except eat, sleep or go to the gym!

I got quite hooked on both general gym activities and also running, so when I came back to the UK in 2009 I joined the local gym and decided to invest in some personal training while also continuing running.  My trainer was a keen cyclist and as we ended up becoming good friends outside the gym, it transpired that eventually she got me on a bike and I found that I liked it and seemed to be naturally good at cycling. I believe it was her that uttered the fateful words “well you like running and cycling, so why not add swimming and give triathlon a go”.  So in the middle of 2010 I made the leap of faith and bought what has become my trusty steed and as the saying goes, from there it’s all history!
Unfortunately my triathlon debut was delayed due to getting an injury not long after getting my bike that ended up needing surgery in early 2011, but it was a case of onwards and upwards and I made my triathlon debut in sprint distance at Windsor in 2011!  I was immediately hooked but since then unfortunately the injury bug has followed me around which means I have been limited to doing only a handful of few sprint distance events over the last few years, until the weekend just gone where I finally got to make my Olympic distance debut and not only crossed the finish line in one piece (which was the first and foremost goal!) but also smashed the time that I thought I would do by about 20mins!

My ultimate triathlon aim is to do an ironman, so now that I’ve finally cracked Olympic distance hopefully it’s a case of keep going onwards and upwards from here!  Thank you to everyone for the support and advice I’ve received so far and look forward to meeting everyone soon!