About Us

First of all, welcome! Thanks for stopping by. You’ll find posts from two people here, Chuck and Audra. We’ve been together for more than a decade, and just like it says in the sidebar, we love our new active life. We run, bike, swim, lift, learn, explore, and write about it here. But it wasn’t always that way. Here’s a little bit from each of us on how we got here and what keeps us moving and writing.

Chuck

Until 2009, I never really did anything at all athletic. I spent most of my childhood in front of a computer or reading, so it’s not surprising that as an adult I did the same. Add to that the fact that I seriously love eating, and it’s also not a surprise that I spent most of my life overweight.

In late 2009, Audra convinced me to join a local gym with her and to spend a few weeks working with a personal trainer. So starting in November of that year, I met with the trainer once every other week and came in to the gym three to five days a week on my own to follow to regimen set out in each session. Initially, I just went through the paces to make Audra happy, but over a month or so, I started to see changes in myself. I lost some weight. In the first session, the trainer asked me what I wanted to accomplish, and all I could think to answer was “I’d like to be able to walk in from a parking lot without being out of breath.” I checked that off in just a few weeks.

Then I got interested. I started asking questions, and my trainer started explaining how to log my food and track the calories I burn to fine-tune the weight loss process. All of a sudden the idea of losing 50 or 80 pounds seemed attainable. In fact, over the next six months or so, I dropped around 100 lbs and a good 12% body fat. My waist dropped from 47″ to 32″.

In 2010 I celebrated by completing a 50 mile bike rally in my hometown with a best friend from high school.

But it wasn’t until 2012 when I signed up to do the 100k route at the same rally (with the same friend) that the idea of cycling really took hold. Around that time Audra started running, too. One afternoon I decided to surprise her by running out to meet her, and it was awesome. We began running — really more run/walking — together almost every morning. Before long I started looking for local group rides to help me get more accustomed to riding my bike on the road, and for a number of weeks I participated in a no-drop ride hosted by same shop had kindly helped me outfit myself for my 2012 100k ride — a shop focused on triathlon. I’d never imagined getting involved in triathlon, but many of the nice triathletes — many of them Ironman finishers — I met on the group rides made it seem accessible and fun. Inspired by them and by a semi-pro age group triathlete Audra and I both knew on Facebook, we signed up for the shop’s 8-week beginner sprint triathlon program, which culminated in our first triathlon in March of 2013.

Since then we’ve become thoroughly addicted to our active life. What started as a journey to lose weight turned into a new life altogether. We’ve made lots of new friends, and fill our spare time with all sorts of fun workouts. Back in 2008, I couldn’t imagine living this way. Now I can’t imagine living any other way.

I never had athletic experiences from childhood to draw on when I came to fitness as an adult, so this is all new to me. I blog here because reading about the experiences of others online has helped me greatly in understanding the situations, feelings, and processes in my new life. I want to do my part in contributing to the body of material that helped me so much.

Audra

Our blog is so new that Audra is still working on her about section. She’s been busy editing and working on posts!