Here's the short version: I'm 64, I spent a career keeping avionics honest, I've spent a lifetime racing anything with a start line — and an illness took my lungs, my fitness, and very nearly the whole plot. This site is me taking it back, in public, one data point at a time.
The long version starts with a hockey kid who never stopped moving. Triathlon, trail ultras, adventure racing — decades of it, the way other people collect stamps. Then a serious respiratory illness parked all of it. Not "took a season off" parked. Parked as in: my fitness chart read 0.0, a number I didn't know the software could display.
When you're rebuilding from actual zero at 64, the internet has two shelves for you: inspiration porn or pity. I'm not stocking either. I'm an engineer — so the comeback runs like an engineering project.Instrument everything, publish the telemetry, let the data keep me honest. Every week's training lands in theRebuild Log: fitness, fatigue, weight, every session, plus the verdict from Cosmo, my AI coach, who has zero respect for my feelings and a perfect record against my bad ideas.
#The Rules
| 01 | SOLO | No sponsors, no team, no one to please. If I recommend gear, it's because it survived me. |
| 02 | RAW DATA | The numbers publish whether they flatter me or not. Ugly weeks get the same chart as good ones. |
| 03 | NO HERO STUFF | The rebuild is aerobic, patient, and boring on purpose. The hills can wait. (See: every argument with Cosmo.) |
| 04 | GREEN ON RACE DAY | Gray hair Monday through Saturday. Neon green when a number gets pinned on. Non-negotiable. |
#How We Got Here
Hockey kid → endurance lifer
A kid who never stopped moving becomes an adult who signs up for things with cutoff times. Triathlon, trail, adventure racing — decades of start lines.
Avionics engineer
A career spent trusting instruments over feelings, because at 30,000 feet feelings get people killed. Foreshadowing, as it turns out.
The illness
A serious respiratory illness takes the lungs out of the equation. Fitness chart: 0.0. The longest DNF of my life.
The rebuild — in public
Week 1 is on the board: five sessions, CTL off zero. The engineer instruments the athlete. The athlete argues. The data wins. You get to watch.
#Why "Gray → Green"?
Because the gray is what happened to me, and the green is what I do about it. The hair is real — sixty-four years of it. On race day it goes neon green, and yes, there's a specific dye and a specific ritual, and no, I'm not explaining it to the guys at the pool. The strikethrough in the tagline isn't hiding the gray. It's overruling it.
Hair
Attitude
Sunriver, Oregon. Endurance athlete since the wired-heart-rate-monitor era. Former avionics engineer and trainer. Occasional cook, frustrated marine biologist, author of one novel, owner of one very specific shade of green. Racing solo and unsponsored — which means the only person this comeback has to satisfy is the guy in the chart.