Spring 2009 - Seattle University

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Photo BY chris joseph taylor
Alycia Hill, ’11, and her dad, Doug Hill, ’81 JD, train religiously—and with intensity—for triathlon competitions.
Team Sport
Father and daughter share passion—and competitive streak—for triathlons
What keeps an athlete motivated
to withstand the endurancetesting
combination of
swimming, biking and running that
makes up a triathlon event?
For Doug Hill, ’81 JD, it’s an
addiction—and a passion—he shares with
his daughter, Alycia Hill, a sophomore at
Seattle University.
“Racing gives you this amazing
adrenaline rush,” she says. “There’s
nothing else like it.”
Doug’s fascination with competitive
triathlons was sparked by accident almost
30 years ago. On a Sunday afternoon in
his law school days, in between homework
assignments, he switched on the TV and
happened to see an Ironman triathlon in
progress.
As an experienced runner—he
had participated in marathons in his
20s—Doug understood the discipline
required for long-distance racing. But the
Ironman was something else entirely—
an intense 2.4-mile swim, followed by a
112-mile bike ride and a 26-mile marathon
run. It seemed impossible.
“I couldn’t wrap my head around the
discipline and strength it took to compete
in a race like that. It blew me away,”
he says. At that moment, it became a
personal challenge.
Over the next 10 years, he began a
rigorous 20-hours-per-week training
schedule that consisted of daily runs
and regular stretches of cycling and
swimming. His hard work and ambition
culminated in the late 1980s, when
he competed in three Ironman races,
including the Ironman in Hawaii. While
there, Doug remembers the nightly phone
calls he made to his wife, who was nine
months pregnant with Alycia at the time.
Three weeks after he finished 87th in what
he calls the marquee event of the sport,
his daughter was born. The coincidence
of her birth and his finish in the Ironman
seemed to predetermine Alycia’s future as
a triathlete.
Like her father, Alycia, ’11, possessed a
great deal of athleticism prior to
SU Magazine Spring 2009 | 41