NOVA Team Profile: Erin Masterson

NOVA President Erin Masterson
finishes the 2014 Boston Marathon

PRs
800m: 2:15.2
1500m: 4:40.3
Mile: 5:03
5k: 18:28.7
5 Mile: 32:48
10k: 40:05
10 Mile: 1:05:57
Half Marathon: 1:31.2
Marathon: 3:08:34

Erin Masterson started running at the advanced age of 7. Growing up in Annapolis, MD, she was recruited to the Annapolis Junior Striders, a fledgling running club started by her dad as an offshoot of the flagship Annapolis Striders. The group never acquired more than 10 members, two of whom were Erin and her twin brother Andy, but familial pressure kept Erin coming back. She maintained a consistent training schedule throughout her younger years, competing in both cross country and track races as an unattached runner, including racing a 200 meter dash against Olympian Meredith Rainey Valmon as a 9 year old (Meredith won).

Erin later ran cross country and track at Annapolis High School, competing in a range of events from 200 meters to 3200 meters, long jump, and pole vault. She earned numerous Baltimore Sun and Washington Post All Met honors in track and cross country, was named Anne Arundel County Athlete of the Year three times, and collected 13 County, 12 Region, and four Maryland 3A/4A State titles in track during her high school career. She also earned the inaugural Bill and Debby Belichick Scholar Athlete Award at Annapolis High School in 2001 (Bill Belichick, Head Coach of the New England Patriots, is an Annapolis native and 1970 AHS graduate).

Erin was enthusiastically recruited to American University by then-AU Assistant Coach (now NOVA Coach) Jerry Alexander, but decided to go farther from home and accepted a track scholarship to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg VA. While at W&M she earned Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) All-Conference honors in the 1500 meters, contributed to the Tribe's streak of Conference Championships in outdoor track and cross country, and served as Cross Country Co-Captain her senior year.  

Since graduating college, Erin has gradually attempted to transform herself into a long distance runner, despite Coach Jerry's firm belief that she should stick to the 5k and 10k. Her favorite race is the Army 10 Mile, but she caught the marathon bug after achieving a PR of 3:20.45 in the 2013 Boston Marathon and now all bets are off. Erin joined NOVA in 2011 and began serving on the NOVA Board in 2013 as the Social Media Director. In January 2014, she took the reins from Justin Buenaflor and now serves as NOVA President. 

For her day job, Erin works as a consultant in the Public Sector Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, managing projects for the Department of Defense Military Health System. With Coach Jerry's support and encouragement, she is also busy at work building out her second career as a running writer, having had her work featured on Hepstrack.com, Active Life DC, Track & Field News, and RunWashington, in addition to the NOVA Blog. She is now the Military Running feature writer for RunWashington. She is also a member of the Oiselle Flock racing team. Her three loves in life are running, writing, and writing about running.

Links to all Erin's publications can be found on her own blog, http://happinessinhindsight.wordpress.com/ 

Links to Erin's Active Life DC publications can be found here