Biography

When I was younger I thought I was an alien spy, come to Earth to analyze the human race. My species was not a threatening one, but rather we knew the humans would not respond peacefully to our presence. I guess I just never grasped that life could be so simple that I could have been produced by two normal people such as my parents.

But that is how it really happened. It was May 30, 1990. That was when I came about, not when I was made. I suspect that was about 9 months earlier, but we’ll not get into that, mainly for my own sake.

I was a little porker, a little chunky ball, I guess like most babies. But I remained that way through my childhood. I always had the flab under my armpits, the abnormally large “pecs” and abnormally large gut that I liked to call my baby. But when I was about fifteen things changed. The baby was no longer funny. It was time to take control of my life.

Yeah sure I was pretty active when I was little. My dad took me on several bike tours of Virginia. I loved my bike. I loved my surfboard, my snowboard, my kayak. But I also loved my nachos and my ice cream. And I definitely was not into hammer-time and suffering. In fact, I didn’t really know there were people who liked to suffer. But just two days into my freshman year of high school, my entire life changed.

Of course it did not happen instantly, I still thought 8:00 min./miles was fast and 6:00 was impossible and cheered the day I broke 24 for a 5k. Oh yeah and I still only reached 20 miles per hour biking the downhills. But I did get cut from the soccer team right at the beginning of my freshman year. And something that seemed so harsh and unfair and upsetting ended up being an amazing life changing event.

I needed to play a sport for at least two seasons. So I joined the cross country team. It was embarrassing. I was last on the training runs on the JV squad. But because it was embarrassing, I started working hard, training hard, eating right. And by the end of my freshman year, despite having been plagued with injury from the new sport, I still had run faster than I ever thought possible. For Christmas that same year my dad gave me an awesome Giant OCR 3 racing bike. Yeah the components were made out of plastic, but I didn’t care. I went out that summer for the Bryan Park training races and entered in the Category 4/5 race. I hung on till the last three laps. I thought these guys were ridiculous. I didn’t even stay to watch the Cat 1,2,3 race. But the next week the organizer hosted a Junior race and I got the opportunity to best the competition and hold my arms above my head for the first time. I won it and it was intense. I had never felt that before, being the best. And I had trained for it too, worked my bum off.

So the cycling season ended and with more confidence and pride and accomplishment in one summer than in all my life before, I joined the Varsity XC squad. And with some fast legs I tasted the team aspect of the sport. I scored points as the team’s fifth runner for several of the first meets. And after I finished, I cheered for the guys still finishing that I worshiped the year before. But injury continued to plague me and all of them proved the early season meets were just a warm up. But I had tasted achievement and I wanted more. It was like an addiction now. Running had turned from satisfying a season of athletic requirement to a passion.

So when I googled the misspelled “Triathalon” my passion evolved to the next step. That’s all it took was “Did you mean: triathlon “.

For real, there are triathlons in Virginia! Over a dozen of them! And there about five right here in Richmond.

I had absolutely no clue how to swim and what better way to learn than to join the high school swim team? So with several state champions in the lanes next to me, the coach said, “Alright well, lets see your stroke.” I swam about fifteen yards, grabbed the lane line and hung for my life, gasping for air. I can imagine what the coaches were thinking. I knew what I was thinking. I was back to the beginning, loaded with utter embarrassment. But they had nothing but encouraging things to say and helped me with my stroke so that by the end of the season I was able to swim for distances and was able to keep up with the slower swimmers on JV squad.

It was a work in progress but with yet some more help from a teacher at my school, a local phenom triathlete and distance runner, Suzanne LaPrade Lewis, I learned all about triathlon.

In April of my Sophomore year, 2006 I went to Lynchburg, Virginia to compete in my first triathlon, Angel’s Race triathlon. And with the 300 meter pool swim being so insignificant, I faked my way through the first leg to do surprisingly well on the bike and the run to place first in my age group, twelfth overall. I was hooked, especially because I had a plaque that said first place on it. The friends of a JMU student who had come in second for 16-19 just behind me supported him by telling him “Its your first race, that kid’s probably been doing this for years.” My dad quickly replied “Ha. It’s his first race too.”

And to hear that kind of excessive pride almost like cockiness from my dad, to know how proud my parents were of my months and months of work that paid off was definitely the most rewarding thing that day. Now my dad has more or less learned to keep his mouth shut though.

Now it has become years and years of hard work. And having earned the opportunity to hold my arms high at the finish line several times now, I am still working hard keeping plugging along with training and racing, loving the sport that changed my life in hopes that one day maybe I can make it big.