ABOUT ME
ENTER A SKINNY, SHY FRESHMAN NERD
Exit All-City linebacker & captain of the football team. Tired of being meek and bullied, I went out for the freshman football team and took full advantage of the strength coach hired by the booster club who staffed the ill equipped rusty weight room every day after school. This is the first inflection point of my life and future career. Coach Cantor, a PhD student at the time, punished me 2 hours per day for 4 years and turned me into a EATing, LIFTing machine. He later went on to become the strength and conditioning coach for the Philadelphia Eagles. I still use some of his unorthodox methods in my programming.
My next chapter, written at Cornell University, was a unique and wonderful opportunity to gain real life marketable skills in a dynamic, quickly evolving campus wide fitness program expansion. I was hired as an upperclassman undergraduate manager to help plan, open and run the Cornell Fitness Centers. At this time, I was finishing up my degree in nutritional biochemistry with a minor in exercise science from Ithaca College (exchange program) and playing rugby on a nationally ranked team. In summary, more EATing & LIFTing!
Over the next 10 years after college, I conducted 18,000 private personal training sessions, led the typical personal trainer meathead lifestyle, played men’s club rugby and entered some Olympic weightlifting meets. My first foray into endurance sports was in 2007 at the age of 32 when a client encouraged me to enter a local 10km. At the time I could do 15 x 100m sprints at an impressive clip for a 240 lb. rugby goon, but struggled to run one continuous mile. TLDR - I completed my first Ironman 140.6 event in August of 2008 and I was hooked. Having instantly taken to the multisport lifestyle like a fish to water, I was an Ironman 140.6 fanatic from 2008-2014, competing for and finishing 4 events. During that period I qualified for USAT Age Group Nationals twice. Along the way, I competed in dozens of multi-sport events of all distances. To date, the best performance of my endurance career was a 10:34 finish at Ironman US Championship in 2012. Family commitments, a major cycling accident and a growing business have caused me to take a hiatus from ultra distance triathlon. I now train for and compete in marathon and ultra running events. I still swim and cycle for cross training, pleasure and coaching.
