My love for outdoor sports started back in High School (1977-1980), with the usual cross country, baseball, and basketball, then later evolved into skiing. Despite being one of the slowest, I kept pushing. Fast forward to 1986 when I joined the Army, travelled the world, and skied it too. My BIG sporting breakthrough came in 2005 after surviving Stage 4 esophageal cancer and told I had a 2% chance of surviving. Obviously, I did survive, which is when the remarkable started happening. Anyone who has gone through a similar life altering experience knows that after you escape it, and come out that much better on the other side, you then have the feeling that you can accomplish anything. That is when my running and other outdoor sports accomplishments really took off. After retiring from the Army in 2008, I started to enter A LOT of local 5K races and started to win a lot of podium places in my age group. Finally, in 2014, the ultramarathon bug hit me and I was hooked.