I Thought You’d Be Faster: The Quest To Become An Athlete.

Women’s Quest alumni, Amy Moritz shares her Women’s Quest defining moment and her new book “I Thought You’d Be Faster: The Quest To Become An Athlete.”

The week was transformative on so many levels. I came to Women’s Quest without a specific intention, just a general call, a feeling that I needed to explore this athletic side of my soul. A side that I had neglected for too long. Bit by bit, I started to see what I could do, what we all could do.

Then came the ropes course. It was the only part of the week that terrified me, the only activity I was adamant I would sit out.
But something happens when you’re around positive, encouraging women. You step out of your comfort zone. You tap into the inner strength. You follow that longing in your heart.

You end up at the top of a 30-foot telephone pole on a ropes course element called “The Leap of Faith.”

The idea was to climb the pole then attempt to jump out and catch a trapeze bar that was 10 feet away, all while secured in a harness. You were jumping into the unknown. You were taking a literal “leap of faith.”
But it wasn’t the unknown that scared me.

It was that climb. If there was an option to magically be lifted to the platform to take in the view, set an intention, and jump off, I would have been all in. That would have been easy. The scary part, the difficult part, was getting through all those obstacles — the unlucky position of the rope, knocking off the rungs, the crying (which greatly reduced my lung capacity). It was getting through the self-doubt which pestered me at every obstacle, planting thoughts of unworthiness and failure and the possibility of an untimely (and stupid) death. It was taking the cliché “It’s the journey and not the destination” and putting it into practice — a practice which would become a way of living life, instead of just talking about it.

To get here, I fought myself. I cried. I whined. I doubted. The journey wasn’t pretty. It was awkward and tear-stained and thick with shallow breaths. But I did it. I sat with a sense of accomplishment, not just of the climb up the pole but of putting myself on a new path, one that would be challenging and twisting and would at times double back on itself. But a path that felt more authentic to the way I wanted to live.

Slowly I wiggled my butt to the end of the platform.
One . . . two . . . three.
Suddenly I was falling. The rope caught. My arms flew out. In an instant it was over. I screamed and then smiled.
The journey wasn’t over. It had only just begun.

Amy Moritz is a Women’s Quest alumnus based in western New York state. A sportswriter at The Buffalo News for 18 years, she is out with her first book, “I Thought You’d Be Faster: The Quest To Become An Athlete.” A sportswriter turned triathlete and distance runner, Amy became an adult-onset athlete in her 30s. While in love with the sport and all it brought her, she was nagged by a lingering question: Was she really an athlete? Through this memoir, Amy describes her own journey to defining herself as an athlete and explores why it can be so challenging for women, of all abilities, to do the same.

The book is available through Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Thought-Youd-Be-Faster-Athlete/dp/0692968881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511961393&sr=8-1&keywords=amy+moritz