My foundation, Volume 1

Okay, so I'm blatantly stealing from Eric here...he does this great thing every Friday called "Friends and Family Friday" and it's fun to see! So I'm not nearly as disciplined nor can I think up such a catchy name...so I'm going to do this whenever the mood strikes me (probably not weekly, but hey, who knows....maybe more than weekly--I sorta fly by the seat of my pants on this thing). I'm going to call it My Foundation. These people are the things that have grounded me and made me who I am. They've influenced me and helped me get this far, and for various reasons they are helping me get to Ironman MOO. Figured the least I could do is thank them and give them some props. :)

So Volume 1 would have to be my best friend and husband, Matt. Sometimes in life you never know how things will end up. Our first date would occur in 1992 when he came to a band festival to ask me to Homecoming (yes, I was a band-geek and proud of it). He actually paid $5 to get into the stupid thing just to ask me out.

But the funny thing is we remained friends. We never actually dated...well, not until 2001, that is!


Now I can't imagine life without him. He is a great support for me as I tend to be a *teensy* bit type-A and can worry/stress out a bit. :) (That's putting it mildly) This guy is the epitome of calm. I rarely see him get worked up about anything, which is good, since I sometimes get worked up about nothing. Sometimes, I'll be freaking out about something: work, hill repeats, how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-in-a-4-hour-brick-this-weekend?, cleaning the bathroom, chopping a tomato, who knows what else, and he'll just make me laugh because he's so calm in the face of my temporary insanity. It's great because he makes me realize that life just isn't so serious, you know? Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and roll with it.


He loves adventure--that's why HE'S the mountain biker, and I'm the roadie. He introduced me to backpacking and I really have fallen in love with it. We are so excited to backpack the Grand Canyon in less than a month! We've had lots of fun adventures backpacking and hiking, like this one in West Virginia last August. It's amazing how relaxing it can be to lug a 25 pound thing on your back--who knew? :)

He's a phenomenal athlete, too. He's got this quiet sense of athleticism. You never see him bragging about how good of a soccer player he is, or how he was recruited by several Division I schools for football. In fact, not many people even know that. He's got a real classy and quiet style of leadership that draws people to him as he coaches his high school soccer team, too.


So thanks to Matt, for being there to support me, to laugh with me, and to calm me down and make me laugh at myself. I'm so excited to share my first Ironman with him and couldn't do it without him at my side supporting me through this slightly insane journey. I'm a lucky, lucky girl!