Welcome to my blog!

This is my first official post on the blog.  My hope is that this blog becomes a way to document and share my experiences as a triathlete.  I also hope that the blog becomes somewhat of a journal of my life experiences as a husband, father, teacher, coach, and triathlete.

Eight weeks ago my beautiful wife, Laura, gave birth to our first child.  Simply stated, Lucas James is awesome!  I think we've been very lucky so far because he's a very good sleeper and eater.  I've talked to a lot of parents about the tremendous responsibility it is having a new born.  We've started to experience that responsibility, but I think keeping the disciplined schedule that a triathlete keeps has helped me fulfill those responsibilities.  Sure it means many more 4:30 a.m. alarms so that I can get a workout in, but it's well worth it results in a few hours to spend with Laura and Luke.  Actually, the 4:30 a.m. alarms kind of blend right in with the middle-of-the-night alarms Luke sounds off for us.

(On vacation in Hilton Head, SC.  I have a lantern for a hat.)

Last week I raced Eagleman 70.3 (half-ironman distance is a 1.2 mi. swim, 56 mi. bike ride, and 13.1 mi. run) for the second year in a row.  It was a good day overall since I improved my time by 24 minutes from the previous year.  However, I fell short of my lofty goal of 4 hrs 50 min with a final finishing time of 5:02:15

http://www.tricolumbia.org/userfiles/files/event_files/eagleman/results/EM_Full_Results_20110620_web.pdf

The reason I bring this up in my first blog posting is because at dinner the night before the race my dad asked the question that I think every triathlete ponders.  Why do you do triathlon?  I started my response with the caveat that there was no quick and simple answer.  It's more of a conversation that can lead down many paths, and if he wasn't truly interested in the conversation (like most people that ask the question and quickly lose interest in your response) I would understand.  Being the caring curious father that he is, he said he was truly interested.  So we proceeded to have a conversation that my mom and Laura's parents participated in as well.  Now, if you thought I was going to answer the question here on my first posting, you're going to be disappointed.  I've already taken up too much of your time so I'll just give you a sneek preview.  The reasons why I do triathlon have elements of spirituality, soul, competition, accomplishment, health, and ego just to name a few.  If you choose to become a consistent reader of my blog, which means I'll need to become a consistent writer, I hope that my postings will provide a good sense of the motivation I have to do triathlon.