I come from a family that had a lot of 'success' in titles. My mom had a feature written about her in Sports Illustrated and held national records, so I grew up seeing all of her medals and trophies. My dad was a captain of the football team in college, a Captain in the Navy and a dentist, My uncle held a national record for the most consecutive extra points in college football. My brother graduated with honors from the University of Texas, then went on to a Master's and Ph.D. So, I have all of these people that have had immense success, and for me, I felt my only worth was in achieving a similar status. 

All this to say, I felt an immense level of expectation, one of which was trying to win State at something -- anything. I won State in track and field at a young age, and when I was 12, I had the fastest 1500 meter time in the country. I was a big fish in a small pond. I would play football on Friday night, then wake up the next morning and run a cross country meet. I'd jump straight out of that and into basketball, then track and field, and I'd leave that to go to baseball. Rinse, repeat. I was always regimented. But it got to a point where it was not fun for me, and I felt the pressure of everything that I thought my family wanted me to do; to the point where, at a track workout one day, I ran full speed and hit my dad as hard as I could. I think that was a turning point in my life. It was the first time in my life that I expressed how I was feeling, even though I didn't know how to express it. 

I dropped out of college with 14 hours left until I graduated. I just couldn't do it. I was extremely suicidal and suffered from extremely high anxiety and severe depression. Looking back, every research paper I wrote in college was based on suicide - one of my papers was called 'A Reason to Live.' There's a psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl who wrote a book about what he observed as a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. The people that lived had some type of attachment to something, which was the driving force behind how they endured such incomprehensible conditions. That idea helped me reorient myself on my search for belonging and attachment. The reason I'm telling you this is because everyone has their own story. This is mine.

After leaving college, I landed in Houston, Texas, where I went and worked at a store called REI. There, I was exposed to so many different people from diverse backgrounds, and they all had this extreme passion for the outdoors. They taught me amazing things about outdoor gear, about paddling, canoeing, kayaking. I ended up getting into adventure racing, which I did for the next decade, all over the country. These races were anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days, and to be in the elite category, you had to race co-ed. I learned that when it comes to endurance racing, men act macho, but we crumble after about 18 hours. The cool thing about adventure racing is that it's all about team dynamics. Luckily on my teams, there was never any ego, and we would set the expectations beforehand that whatever happened, wherever we finished that we'd still be friends. Whether we won, or whether we came in 10th place, we were in it together. That camaraderie may have stood out to me at that time because it was the first time I'd experienced it.

I want to stay true to myself.

Hey, I don't have this big degree from wherever. In fact, I may not have been mentally stable, but I was stable enough to know that I needed to leave that situation and find another route that's not commonly accepted by the broad population. And I did. And my joy comes because I stayed true to who I am. Years later, I married the most incredible woman on the planet, and I understand that. She is everything good in a human being. She radiates positivity and has a knack for finding the good in every situation. The first time I met her was when I was teaching spin classes at the downtown YMCA. She would come every Thursday morning and would sit in the back corner and smile, she was full of light. The day I asked her out she said, "I would very much like to do that, but I'm about to go backpacking in Australia and New Zealand for the next three months. I will call you when I get back." I can tell you, that was the longest three months of my life. When she landed, she called me the next day, and we've never been apart since.

By following my own path, not the Interstate; but the windy, narrow path, I've realized some important things about myself, and these are the things that make me tick; family, exercise, community, creativity, travel, and fun. Success to me is being able to pursue a life that is closely aligned to those core values.

When I showed up at 29029, I intended to maximize the best version of me. The magic is in the mountain. It doesn't care about the labels or the titles that have been placed on you throughout your life. Your background is irrelevant. You've got 36 hours to put in everything that you have and to reap the benefits of that. And I hope the people that I lead to this event will do the same. 29029 brings this incredible duality to the table, it's personal dynamics and team dynamics. As a fitness trainer in my professional life, I'm incredibly passionate about the people I work with, and about other people succeeding. Even if we don't agree on certain things, I am 100% all about them reaching their full potential.