A Little Background

I'm a 31-year-old man living in Denver, CO. I started running competitively during my freshman year of high school in 1994. I eventually captained both the Cross-Country Running and Track & Field teams. When I headed off to college, I continued to run and was a C-team member of the Men's Cross-Country team at The University of Portland. In college, I just really enjoyed the experience and didn't take running too seriously. My best 8K time was somewhere around 28:30 (5:40-ish mile pace) and honestly I spent more time studying abroad, snowboarding or going to parties with friends than what I would call a real 'focused runner' would have. None-the-less I ran every season that I was there and even began doing some marathon running while studying abroad in Europe. 

I ran my first marathon in October, 2000 in Venice, Italy. I ran a 3:11. I followed that race up with 2 more 3:11's in 2001 (Vienna & CIM) and a horrible 3:36 (or so) in Los Angeles in 2003 while in Grad school. Eventually though I had a breakthrough while training for my first triathlon (Ironman Germany 2004) and wound up running a 3:02 in Salzburg in April, 2004. Later I would run the Boston marathon in '05 as well as another Ironman and finally a 2:54 at the Chicago marathon in late '05. 

After that, I hung up the marathon shoes and pursued the triathlon lifestyle. I was much better at triathlon than I ever was at running as a stand-alone sport. I went on to race triathlon for the next 6 years, going to multiple national championships, world championships and even trying to give the ITU-format a shot. Near the end of last season, however, I started to have a lot of issues with my Sciatic nerve and Piriformis, which kept me from creating much power on the bike. Due to this I decided that I needed a goal to get me motivated again throughout the winter. So, I comitted to racing the Rome marathon this past March. Training went well, but in the end, I fell short of my goal of going sub-2:40 in Rome (more on that experience later). I came away with an 8:32 PR but was dissapointed by the outcome. 

Since then I have talked to a lot of people regarding their training and different philosophies on running. One man's name came up more than a few times... Jack Daniels, PhD, the author of the widely acclaimed "Daniels' Running Formula". I'd heard this name over the past few years and it seemed that almost every good runner that I knew had read it at some point. In fact my good friend, Jon Hiatt had read the book last summer and used Jack's Elite Training Plan to run a 2:32:10. I'm nowhere near as quick as Jon, but I know that I can run a marathon at 6-min pace. Over the next few months I intend to use this book to change my typical running routine up and do just that. 2:37 here I come!