Friday, February 25, 2011

First Post

So here I am, going to be a blogger.  Most of my public internet conversations are limited to 140 characters so this is going to be a change for me.  But now I am going to open up and let it all hang out in this blog.   Hopefully I can be somewhat entertaining and make it worth your while.  I don't know how often I'm going to be updating this blog but keep checking back.

A little bit about me.  I'm 32 years old (33 in a few days), born and raised in Detroit, married, no kids, 2 Siberian Huskies, and I work in IT for a bank.  For a hobby I race triathlon.  I mostly like to do Ironman distance races but I'll race pretty much any distance. I've always had some sort of a hobby.  Before I did triathlons I was racing dirt bikes.  The problem there was the high risk of injury and the increasing costs of equipment.  It would cost me close to $300 a weekend to go riding somewhere.  So I found cycling and found that I really liked it.  A friend at work was doing Team in Training and told me I should try doing a triathlon.  I told her I couldn't swim and I hated running.  She eventually convinced me and I signed up for a sprint.  I worked really hard on learning to swim.  I would watch Youtube video's on my bed and try to mimic the stroke.  Then going to the lake to practice.  I wanted to make sure I could swim a little bit before I actually went to a pool.  The night before the race, I actually had really bad food poisoning.  I woke up the next day and thought I put too much time to just skip it.  So on the way to the park I picked up a Red Bull (which was a bad idea) and went on to the race.  I was so nervous waiting to for the gun to go off.  Once the gun shot all the nerves went away and I was off.  I had trouble keeping my hr down thanks to the Red Bull.  Crossing the finish line for the time was amazing for me even though it was a local race.  Finally I did my first triathlon and completely fell in love.  It was the toughest thing I ever did and I was so excited. 

It was all downhill from there.  I ended up doing 3 more races in the next 4 weeks.  So here I am now going on my 5th year of racing and I still love it like the first race.  I've done over 25 races including 2 full Ironman.  As for results, I've done much better than I did that first race.  I've had some good sucesses in the sport and that's what really drives me.  Triathlon has brought a lot of structure to my life and helped me be a better person. 

So keep watching world.  2011 is going to be a great year.  I have 3 Full IM's scheduled and a few other smaller races.  I am also a member of Gear and Training's triathlon team.  You can actually go there and use coupon AG12 and save 20% and free shipping on all orders over $150.  They seem like great people and I am really looking forward to this year and all the things to come.