When I was in my mid 40's, I started feeling creaky.

I thought to myself that I was too young to be old, so I decided to start getting active.

I became a fair weather runner. I ran when it wasn't too hot or wasn't too cold or I wasn't too busy.

As I neared 50, I felt I needed something to distract me from that milestone so I ran more consistently, more often and completed a half marathon. I really enjoyed it so I moved up to marathons, running one a year for the next four years.

Then my wife and I bought a water access camp (rustic cottage) and started to spend a good portion of our summers there. This made it difficult to do any serious run training so I went back to little exercise. I started swimming a bit at the camp. The thought occurred to me that I could do a triathlon since I knew how to run, was learning how to swim and figured biking would come back to me.

I signed up for a try a tri. It was short but I suffered greatly on the run. I trained a little more intelligently and moved up to a sprint. It went really smoothly and I was hooked. Here's my race report from that time.

That was four years ago and this year I came 24th in my age group at the World Triathlon Championships in Mexico! I love the all around body fitness, the challenge of learning all three sports and trying to combine all the sports for an optimal race.