Astoria Socializin'

One of the nice things about Team in Training is that they hook you up with a mentor -- a volunteer who's done your specific event through TNT before and can answer any questions you have, help inspire and encourage you, the whole nine yards. What's even nicer is that they were smart enough to hook us up with a mentor in our neighborhood, Astoria. We love Astoria very much. We love our decently-sized apartment, our driveway, our backyard, our local restaurants and our grocery store where more than one cart can fit down an aisle at a time. We don't love that 98% of our friends live in Manhattan -- so we don't get to do a lot of socializing in our own neighborhood. Although we're not far from the city (it's easier to get to us than it is to get to many spots in Brooklyn or the Lower East Side), people seem to live in fear of a subway that actually goes above ground. Kinda sucks.

So we were pretty psyched when our awesome mentor, Ashley, decided to organize an Astoria-specific meetup this past weekend. We met at Crescent Lounge, which is just a couple of blocks from our old apartment, by the Broadway stop. Ashley and Marisa, another Astoria mentor, were in attendance, as were other tri newbies: Will, Lance, Jessica and myself. Ashley's fiancé Ryan was there for support.

We had a really nice night with everybody. It was reassuring to find out that nobody in the group was a hardcore athlete. Ashley's first tri was last year, Marisa's on her second -- but the rest of us were in various stages of "what the hell have I signed myself up for?" We discussed lots of logistics and traded stories about our various previous athletic experiences. It was really nice. The group eventually thinned out, leaving Ryan, Ashley, Jess and I to challenge each other with '80s trivia in the bar. The four of us went out to dinner at Sac's, one of our favorite restaurants from the neighborhood, and just had a great night.

It was really nice to spend some time with fellow Astorians. We'll be doing much more of this as training begins. Right now, training only happens in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island -- wouldn't it be great if, at some point, TNT does training at Astoria Park, 15 minutes from our apartment...?