Quick intro and pre-Colorado recap...

I guess I'll start by saying that this is my very first ever blog attempt in my entire life, well at least since blogging has been around. I decided to pull the trigger on this yesterday, May 20, 2013, when I commented on a running friend's blog after her very first half-marathon in Denver. She told me "Do it. If not to motivate and inspire others it will give you something to look back over when you are wondering how far you've come!". So this is it...this is blogging.  It's 3:45am and I have been awake since 2:00am listening to my daughter sleep-cough and wondering where and how to start... This is probably going to be 99% about running, cycling, and triathlon events I've done, with snip-its peppered in about my training for said events. I dare to call them races too often.

It all began in 2005, maybe 3-4 months after I met my soon-to-be wife Stacey in Palo Alto, CA. She had just bought her first road bike and at the time I was impressed I had an allen wrench set for my dad's hand-me-down hybrid cruiser. So in an obvious attempt to impress future wife, I bought my very first road bike. A bright yellow Felt F70.  And that's it, that's all I knew about the bike. It was bright yellow and shiny and I didn't want to scratch it...ever. And this made me proud.  That same summer we decided to do our very first registered bike ride, a 100-mile century down in Santa Cruz. Not knowing squat about how much training this really entailed, nor that an overly-massive bowl of gnocchi the night before was a bad idea, we both barely finished. But afterwards, I knew there was no end in sight and eventually Stacey would go on to say she "created a monster."

For 3 more years, we toured the roads and mountains around San Jose, San Gregorio, Berkeley, Milpitas, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, and Woodside. We even took some trips to ride in Sonoma wine country and down to Las Vegas. I got about 10 or so organized rides and fundraisers over those 3 years...centuries, half-centuries, metric centuries...but mainly just enjoying time with Stacey.    

I made a few attempts at running while living in California, but it never stuck and I really didn't care. In late 2007, after being married for just over a year, Stacey came home and said she had a transfer option to Denver. I responded quite succinctly: "if you say yes, I say yes", and we were off. We miss Palo Alto and San Francisco, but Colorado grabbed me the second I rolled in and these mountains will hopefully keep us here. Because what Stacey didn't realize 8 years ago when she "created a monster" was that it would eventually get worse...I say better...