Are you an athlete?

About a year ago, I took an intro to cycle class at Life Time. At that class, I learned how to set up the bike to fit me & we did some testing to find out where our anaerobic threshold was on the bike. As class was ending, Dave mentioned that he taught a 5:15am class on Mondays & there was a performance cycle class on Sunday afternoons with a few weeks left.  The idea of the performance class intrigued me & I showed up for a few of the remaining Sunday afternoons. When they finished, I wished I had started in the beginning!

One Monday morning in July, I dragged myself out of bed to head to Dave's 5:15 morning class.  I loved it, but was starting my run training for multiple fall races and didn't make it a habit.  After my races were done, I finally headed back to the Monday morning class in December. As the holidays were approaching, I started asking if there would be another performance cycle series over the winter. I was happy to hear they were planning on offering it again.

Performance cycle started up January 5th and was being led by Dave & Dawn. Sunday's classes were at Reston with mid-week classes at both Fairfax & Centreville. I also signed up for the indoor tri scheduled for the week after performance cycle ended. I started the year strong - my weekly workouts included cycle (3 days), swimming (2 days) & running (2 days). Since college, I haven't considered myself much of an athlete. I was enjoying all of it, but the alternate early morning & evening workouts was becoming tough for me. Work was keeping my busy during the day and I would rush to the gym at night and usually get home with enough time to feed the cats, pull out clothes for the next day & then collapse in bed. In February, I decided to switch my schedule to early morning class workouts Monday to Wednesday and still doing the mid-week performance cycle Thursday nights. Then my Tuesday/Thursday morning strength training sessions started.  Now I am at the gym every day except Friday.  Thursdays are both morning & evening. Today, I did an hour of strength (mainly arms) and then swam before heading to the office. Let me tell you - it is hard to swim after lifting weights for close to an hour! Some days it is tough to drag myself out of bed, but in the end, I do it because I know it will start my day off on the right foot!

So my question to you is what makes an athlete? Is it someone who is the best of the best? Someone who is part of a team? Or just someone who is training for races (running & triathlons for me)? Someone who works out? What do you think?