A little bit about me! Apart from running and triathlons, I’m a pretty active individual. My wife is an avid runner as well and we love being able to run and race together. We have two little ones and they haven’t quite caught the triathlon bug yet but they’re great cyclists already and my daughter is going to be a better swimmer than me pretty soon!

I’m a frequent traveler for work and play. I’m also an avid SCUBA diver. And I won’t lie, I’m a big geek, which isn’t a surprise for a Red Hat employee. My hobbies are really too numerous to list and my wife is convinced my actual hobby is to collect hobbies. She’s probably onto something.

Running & Triathlon

In 2008 I decided to take up running to get my weight back under control and be, generally, healthier. I didn’t know anything about things like Couch to 5k at the time but that was essentially what I did, running my first 5k race just a month later. I didn’t set any records but I ran under a 10 minute mile! It was something I stuck with fairly well over the years.

Having grown up as a roadie (thanks dad!), I became intrigued by triathlon in 2013 after having (poorly) run the Walt Disney World Marathon as a way to also get back onto my bike again. This turned out to be a game changer for me. I quickly found myself training with a local group of triathletes in Tampa who motivated me to take up basically any challenge. Fitness went from something I did to be healthy to something I did because it was fun and important part of my life. It didn’t take long before I was working my way to longer and longer distances. I’ve now done multiple full Ironman races and quite a few more 70.3s.

At this point, I’m game for anything, as long as it’s hard! Not ultras though. One 50 mile run is enough for me!

Travel & Food

I want to eat my way around the world. I’ve been all over the world for work and play and in my opinion one of the best ways to experience a culture is eat where they eat. I love trying new things and visiting new places. Traveling is also a great excuse to go for a run in an entirely new place. Or schedule a race in an entirely new place. Fortunately Melanie agrees with all of those statements!

Melanie and I are also avid cooks at home and we’re willing to pit our meals against anyone!

Scuba Diving

I live in New Orleans now but there is one thing I miss about Florida and that’s easy access to diving. I’ve been diving for over 2 decades now and it’s probably my first passion. On ever cruise I’ve ever done, I only dive at every stop. I plan whole trips around where I’m going to dive. When I’m underwater I feel like I’m on an entirely different planet. I could definitely lose myself beneath the waves. There’s really nothing more relaxing to me than just drifting along with the current over a coral reef.

Home Automation

Did I mention I’m a huge geek? I’ve been in my house for over 8 years and my home automation has evolved through that time. I started off years ago with a Z-Wave based system that used HomeSeer as my automation hub with most of my rules running externally in Drools CEP. When we renovated a few years ago, I took that as an opportunity to explore if that was the most effective way of handling the technology. And it really wasn’t.

I’ve since migrated my controller over to openHAB, which is a great Open Source project for home automation. My IoT hardware is still all based on Z-Wave which I’ve found to be extremely reliable. My overall setup really does work well and its always evolving a bit.

And the rest…

I could go on. I love reading, skiing, and gaming to name a few more hobbies but it’s hard to fit it all in. I would say the only other thing that I’m really into outside of hobbies is Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s definitely something that I would say defines the way I go about my day to day and I’m quite religious about it.