An athlete as a kid..
It has always been in my blood to accomplish the difficult. According to my Mom, I wore the tires off my tricycle. At 7, I completed my first hike of 17 miles and my first bike ride of 35 hilly miles on a borrowed one speed bike. My mom and sister and I could swim across a lake about a mile. I purchased my first road racing bike when I was about 12 with $120 I earned working a paper route. My buddies and I would race around southeast Wisconsin going really fast often 100 or 125 miles just for fun while riding in cut off shorts and tennis shoes. At that age I could disassemble and reassemble bicycles without difficulty and with precision.
Then I had this big revelation…
After college, I was out of shape and weighed 240 pounds. I was a beer drinking pot smoking junk food eating machine. I had a conviction that my body was a temple of the Holy Spirit of God. As such, it seemed unwise to mistreat it the way I had. I lost the weight and got back to riding my bike, running, occasionally swimming and lifting weights. That conviction was enough to change the course of the rest of my life. In it I am pretty sure I found one of my purposes in life
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Over the years I have mastered water skiing, barefooting, mountain biking, snow skiing, snowboarding, dirt biking and scuba diving. I started running 7.5 miles once a week when I met Mel Preedy in 1993. We have ran almost every Wednesday since then. He is a mentor of mine with 370 marathons over 36 years. He is now 76 and still going strong. In those days I did not have time to compete with raising 4 kids, so I would get up early and do my thing…
Then a bunch of bad things happened that turned out good…
I had a personal life crisis combined with a series of injuries in 2005. By the end of that year I had experienced heavy losses in all areas of my life. At that time I was bribed to qualify and run the Boston Marathon by my running buddies in Maple Valley. Since I could not ride my bikes, but I could run with my arm in a cast, I took up running like Forrest Gump did. My friend Mary Hanna signed me up to join the Marathon Maniacs (#289). I found out most endurance athletes are crazy foolish addicts just like myself, so I found kindred spirits there. I got very frustrated with not qualifying for Boston after 3 attempts, so I quit running for 5 months and I went back to my first love, riding road bikes. Through an unusual turn of events, I ended up meeting a bunch of roadies and tri geeks that rode and ran when I had time available. The tri geeks in the crowd sucked me back into running, and the next thing was I ran the 111th running of the Boston Marathon in 2007!
My Son Terry saw the Ironman on TV. He got excited about the triathlon and encouraged me to give an Ironman a shot. I stared on the endeavor in December, 2007. To date, I have completed 1 Ironman, 3 Half Ironmen, 26 marathons and 11 Olympic distance triathlons.
In the future I plan on…
I intend to qualify for the 2010 World Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii at Couer De Alane in June, 2010. I believe the essentials of success are planning, goals, vision, hard work, determination, and a willingness to pay the price necessary for success. A supportive team around you that believes in you and supports you makes difficult tasks fun! I intend on continuing my athletic endeavors for the rest of my life to the best of my ability. I may not be the fastest guy in the crowd, but all I have to do is outlast em, and at that I have a pretty good track record!
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