I was born on 2nd November 1986, on a small village in the north of Portugal, Forjães. I got a name, Maria João da Silva Leite de Sá and a home, in Vila do Conde, where I lived with my parents. Fortunately when I was five, my little sister was born and I got a partner to share my toys, room and adventures ;)
It wasn't clear for me what kind of job I would like to have when grown up, but on that age gymnastics was really clear on my mind. Nadia Comaneci was my idol and all my efforts where on this direction: I wanted to be on the top of the gymanstic stage. So, after eight years working really hard, I had a place on the national team. Just amazing for me :)
But spending 3 hours a day on a gym was pretty hard for a child, specially when your coach is yealling at you all the time. Unfortunately, on summer 2001 I had big problems with back injury and I had to stop for a few months.
Then, a light from God came to my school and I was introduced to orienteering :) As I couldn't practice so much gymnastics, and I had not so much motivation, I started to go to orienteering competitions with school friends. At first I didn't like so much to spend two hours on the forest completely lost, but I always went to the second day's race on the weekend competitions.
Quickly I decided to quit gymnastics and start putting my running shoes working! It was quite though for a gymnaster to start running, but that was the fun! It was 2002 and we had school's world championships in Portugal...I really wanted to go there with the national team! And I did it!! This was the biggest step ever as I had the opportunity to learn and to see how much I had to work on it. That was really motivating for me. That was the motivation that I was missing for several months!
Day be day I realize how nice was this sport and how much friends that we can get from it. With all the support that I get from my club, I started to orienteer better and on 2004 I had a place on the junior national team. Also my legs were able to run faster and I started to enjoy track and field as well. So on 2006 I was on athletics club (FC Porto) running road races and 3km steeplechase. It was nice to grow up my speed capacitys and to compete on high pace. Although my performance on orienteering was going down as I was more worried on track than on my o-technique and strenght. Orienteering results were getting worse and worse as well as my motivation.
Second light from God came last september when I moved to Poland and I met my coach, Kalikst Sobczynski. He made me believe on my capacitys again and showed the correct way of trainning as an orienteer. Now I'm becoming a «mountain girl» and «moutain lover». Running up hill doesn't scare me anymore :)
School was always nice for me and studying was never boring. I just wanted to learn more and more. It was really gratifying to see my final average high-school mark of 20/20 and got the prize of «best student of 2003/2004» on my city :)
I got in the Medical Univesity of Porto and now I've just finished the 5th year of study and only one is left to finish and become a doctor (still junior little doctor ;)
That's true...working as a doctor and being an orienteer as well will become hard, but I still believe there's some battles to come and many tricky controls to find! Besides, I would really like to go on a WOC A Final :) Whatch out! :):)
