About Me

Born in SF, I grew up 20 miles to the north in Marin County ("north bay" across the Golden Gate Bridge).  Looking back, my parents instilled "focus" in whatever I did--from school home work to sports--it seems like I was "all in" on everything I did, and it was very apparent in sports. "Soccer?" I would attend camps at Cal, play on select teams, and ended competitive soccer my senior year at Marin Catholic with some guys I had played with since I was a "wee pup."  "Baseball?"  For some reason, I was more drawn to baseball, especially in high school, and was most likely because our team was awesome, winning the California State Championships my junior year.  For both sports, I had great coaches along the way (including my dad!), that focused on conditioning---even playing baseball we would make off season trips to Phoenix Lake and run a very awesome trail as a team---we were even competitive on that run!  School was pretty much the same--studying always came first, and sports were my "hobies," but I was very dedicated to them.

I attended UC Davis from 1990-1994, where I initially became the "typical freshman"..I stayed a bit active, tried out hap-hazardly for the baseball team before ending that chapter of my life, but pretty much stopped playing team sports.  My sophomore year, my neighbor, Michelle Pender, convinced me somehow to start running with her (I still remember our first run---sucking wind!)---I have to thank her for that blessing/curse as it was the beginning of life in endurance sports---running mostly at first, but quickly led to Triathlon--the 1992 Davis International Triathlon was my first of that distance--competed on a $300 "old school" TT bike with a front 650cc/rear 700cc setup that was previously the late Steve Larsen's TT bike for road racing that I had bought the week before the race.  I was hooked...my time was  2:18, my training was a mess (very little swimming and just a couple weeks on the bike), but my run helped placed me near the front (sub 40 10K).  So my triathlon "caree" was started, and continued uninterrupted until 1999.  In that time, I raced at Wildflower 70.3 (the premier 70.3 at the time) 5 times, as well as Escape From Alcatraz 3 times (had a top 30!!).  I also competed in about 20 other triathlons around Northern California, but never made the jump to Ironman--at that time there were only a few of them, and it just didn't seem to fit into my life at the time---I finished up at Davis and started UOP Dental School 2 weeks after graduation.  Through Dental School, I still kept competing--squeezing training in as much as I could.  Graduating in 1997 from UOP, I stepped it back up again, before realizing in 1999 that it wasn't doing my "work career" any good with me focusing so much on triathlon.  So onto the back burner triathlon went.

In 2000, I ended up in Arizona after a rainy 9 months in Washington state (do you think the rain drove me to the sun??!!).  I bought my solo practice in 2002, married Jenny in 2006, we had Sophia in 2008---life was grand!  But, I was missing something--there was still a flicker of a fire inside of me for endurance sports.  I dabbled back into running starting in 2005, and made PF Changs Marathon and Half Marathon a yearly deal in 2007.  I merged my practice in 2008, which somewhat opened the door allowing me to consider getting back into triathlon, but this time doing it the right/smarter way with a coach.  But first, I had to see if I still had it "in me." I entered SOMA 70.3 in 2009 on a whim with basically no bike or swim training--I was still in love with the sport!  Jenny didn't know what it meant when she said "why don't you get back into triathlon?"  And, she can thank our brother in law Scott Schreck for re-lighting the fire ;-)  He did IMAZ and SOMA in the years prior, and having gone to watch him...I knew I missed it!

And so started my "un-retirement" from triathlon.  In November of 2009 I hired my coach, Chris Hauth www.aimpcoaching.com, who I had met and ridden with way back in 1999.  He was ramping up for IM Canada at that time, and went on to become a pro, winning IM CDA in 2006 and has raced in 20+ Ironmans--I searched him out as I was starting back into triathlon, and his style and his success with athletes back in the Bay Area was what led me to join up with him for my push to IMAZ 2010.  A major hiccup to IMAZ came in the end of March 2010, when I crashed, breaking and displacing my right collarbone, which required surgery to repair and "re-set" the broken pieces of my collarbone.  I was off the bike until July 2010, then it was "GO TIME."  Chris simply wrote a genius plan for me, and I was on the brink of overtrained the entire time.  A huge ride from SF to Santa Barbara over 3 days was a highlight of the lead up to IMAZ...I came out of the fog of this heavy training, Chris planned the taper perfectly, and I simply had a "perfect" day at IMAZ--no problems, perfect race strategy, and of course feel like I can dig deeper, push harder, and find my true limits...and that's where I am at.  Kona 2011 will definitely be a celebration, and while it will be one of the toughest days of my life, it will also rank as one of the most rewarding things I have accomplished--this blog is about my journey---where it goes next, I have no idea, but I'm sure it will be exciting, full of challenge, and with every destination reached, a new journey will follow...