Allow myself to [re]introduce myself....

My name is Dan. I joined this site about 1.5 years ago and had every intention of being a good member/tri'er. Long story short, I signed up for a race in the fall of 2004 and was hell-bent on doing it. I ended up spending the two weeks prior to the race in Japan (for work) and came back the Saturday before the race. I was in no condition to race. After that, winter set in and I screwed up my knee snowboarding and finally got the all-clear (in late summer of 05) from the doc after having it scoped. I'm finally coming around to this tri thing again and have even found a pretty good off-road duathlon to compete in. It's at the end of April '06.

A little background: I've come over from a weight/body/powerlifting background and have essentially been avoiding cardio. Recently the doc got a little concerned that my BP was a bit high (not good news when you're only 26) and told me to, for the time being, lay off the weights so much and stick to cardio. Uggghhh. Suprise - I found I liked it a bit more now than I did then (I was getting burnt out on heavy lifting anyways). At that time, I was at the biggest I'd ever been ~ 260lbs and about 13-15% BF. My wife and I (not that she needed to lose a pound - she's just very supportive) have been on South Beach for a while now. I've managed to get down to about 235 lbs and am aiming for about 225 lbs for now...I've spent the last three years really just adding muscle and it's worked. But, I have a lot of "hobbies" that don't exactly interact so well with the added size - surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding, etc. The lost weight has already been noticeable with my snowboarding. I've also taken up yoga to help with flexibility. It's all starting to come together for me.

I used to play football and throw shot & discus in high school and miss the competitiveness of it. So, I'm looking for an outlet. I play flag football in the fall, but this will be a good alternative (and training - although the boys aren't gonna like the weight loss ). I competed in a duathlon when I was 18 and loved it. For some reason, I never stuck with it, preferring to gain size instead. Anyway, I'm slowly building up my training over the next few months and am planning on competing in a 2mi/10mi/2mi off-road duathlon. Should be a good time. Anyway - just wanted to say howdy and let you all know I'll be around here more often now!