Crocs and Sox: A little background

I thought it might be nice to keep anyone who cares updated on my hobbies and things I like to do for fun, so I am starting a blog. I plan on mostly just writing about how training has been, and cool stuff I get to do.

Lets start with some background information

I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. I wanted to be a firefighter when I was really little (haven’t taken that career path – yet). I have always liked getting outdoors and having fun. I remember going down to Langford Park and playing hockey outdoors for hours, then going inside and drinking hot chocolate. If I could do that every day for the rest of my life, I would be content. But that’s not how life works.

Colorado during summer 2013

Senior night at the Warner Coliseum

Anyways, I have always been involved in sports. In addition to playing hockey up until this fall, my freshman year of high school I ran cross-country, played football sophomore year, and ultimate Frisbee senior year. I went to ASU with the intention of playing club hockey, but long story short, after two years of trying to live out that goal – it just didn’t work out. I am currently a supply chain management major at Arizona State, and I really like the classes. It’s been very cool getting to go away from home and go to school in a completely different part of the country. It is not a common opportunity that most kids from my high school got, so I intend to make the most of it.

My parents have always been into biking. ~~Some~~ ~~Most~~ All of our family vacations have incorporated biking (my parents met on a bike tour). My older sister Alison swam in high school, and my brother and I both played hockey. I picked up the position of goaltending because he needed someone to shoot on in the basement. I fell in love with guarding the cage. We trained lots over the offseason at a training center called fhit. Watching all of the great athletes up there taught me the correlation between working hard and improvement.

Training up at FHIT

Coincidentally, Steve had a similar negative experience with club hockey at Colorado State, and was exposed to his schools triathlon team and joined. He has posted some really impressive results, including a victory at IM Florida. You can read more about him here. I had played ultimate Frisbee freshman year, but it was tough because I was used to playing all the time from hockey and being able to control many more aspects of my playing time. The idea of sitting on the bench didn’t suit me, so I figured I’d give triathlon a try.

My first race was the lifetime Tempe sprint, and I had a blast. I don’t think I had every used the big ring on my bike before. I was excited to race again. The next race I did was an Olympic in Henderson, Nevada. It was a really tough and fun course.

Finish line at the Pumpkinman Tri

Once these races were done, I began to put a lot of work into swimming (the weakest link). This section wouldn’t be complete without a huge shout out to my sister Alison, Tess at MP Multisport (for the video stroke analysis), Sammy Scott, and Johnny at Swim Devils for helping me out with my stroke over the past couple months. There have been some unreal improvements, and I hope to keep them coming as the season goes on.

I also found I struggled on the bike during races, so I worked on some leg strength over winter break and kept biking as much as possible. Joining the ASU cycling team really helped me become more comfortable on the bike. Despite several crashes, I have really grown to like riding.

Shoutout to the 2 x 4 in the bike lane!

First road race

I never took running seriously in high school. The one year of xc in high school I did I hated it, and swore I would never do anything like it again. Well, here I am; Back for more.

Hopefully that didn’t put you to sleep. If you want to read more about my life, check back again soon!

Here are some pictures.