Peter - intro

Hi. I want to introduce myself, and tell you a little about my life and my sports background before I launch into things on our new diary/community for endurance sports training.

My name is Peter. I'm 33. I grew up and have spent most of my life in New Jersey. I'm married, with two-year-old twin boys. I work at a research center at a large university.

I come from a non-athletic family. As a kid I played soccer and pick-up games, but was never very talented and always felt inadequate at team sports. In junior year of high school a friend convinced me to join the cross country team, and I had a fun couple years as a mediocre runner on the cross country and track teams. A friend from the team, Dan, also got me involved in his church youth group, led by an outdoors-oriented youth minister who led by example, without preaching. He took us on a bunch of backpacking and canoe camping trips.

I think it was right before high school graduation when Dan and I did our first multisport race, a beachfront duathlon. The next year I did my first triathlon. I continued to train and race sprint triathlons through college, swam with the university Masters team, and did a few backpacking trips, including one to Canyonlands over spring break.

Following college I spent a year working a dead end job in Jersey City and running in the windblown riverfront parks.

Grad school found me in Portland, Oregon for three years. I ran in the hills, bought my first real mountain bike, and trained, raced, and partied with a great Masters team. I also rented cross country skis a couple times, and loved it. I raced mostly olympic distance triathlon, but also completed my first marathon.

After that I returned to New Jersey, where I discovered adventure racing through the NY Adventure Racing Association. My first NYARA event was an informal night hike. Resting by a lake after a one mile bushwack, I knew I had found my calling - a sport that combined the endurance multisport from triathlon with the hiking, paddling, and navigation of my wilderness trips. Thus began a few years as an enthusiastic adventure racer, competing in events from 12-40 hours. I also completed two half-ironmans, in 2004 and 2005.

Moving to a stressful job in late 2004 reduced my ability to train. Then, in early 2006, my kids were born. Training time was nonexistent, and racing was impossible because my kids and my wife needed me all weekend. I tried to put racing out of mind. It helped that during this same time period the adventure racing "boom" of the early 2000s was on the wane, particularly in the northeast - early adopters were moving back to triathlon or trying out ultras, fewer people were entering the sport, and fewer races were being offered. But the fact is, endurance sports are in my blood. I don't feel good when I'm out of shape. I need the challenge of training and the thrill and concentration or racing. Most of all, I need short-term goals to balance out the far horizons of fatherhood, career, and marriage. So, I'm starting to train again. It will be a challenging to choose training over other ways I can spend my time, and it will be challenging for my family when I race, but it will only get easier as the kids grow up. Why wait? I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for the right time to excel at something I love - waiting for college, career, kids. That's BS. The right time is now, always.