About Me

I'm Jeff, and this blog is about my recovery from FAI/Hip Impingement surgery and my journey back to achieving some lofty goals.  I live in Phoenix, AZ with my ridiculously supportive wife, Sara, and my two amazing kids, Connor and Cambell.

I grew up in Dubuque, IA, and began following my father's footsteps in running at a young age.  I think I was your typical kid, I loved doing the events, and wanted to be like dad, but didn't necessarily want to put in the time to prepare for them.  So I ran the local 1 mile fun runs and 5K's that my dad would sign me up for while he would run his longer distance races.  I dabbled in Cross Country in high school, but never took it seriously and continued to train for road races.

I gained an early appreciation for the Boston Marathon, as I watched my dad train for and successfully qualify for 4 of them, including the 100th anniversary.  The passion he had for that one particular race has stayed with me and is now one of my goals on my bucket list.

I have lived in the Phoenix area for almost 14 years now, and I have continued to meander in and out of running during that time.  There was a period of time in 2004/2005 where I trained for my first half-marathon and full-marathon.  While I had very successful debuts in both distances, life happens, and I made some poor lifestyle choices afterwards, and I fell out of the running community.

In July of 2012 I decided it was time to make a change.  My kids are avid triathletes and I would try to share my knowledge and experience with them, but as I would try to coach them, I couldn't help but think that they had to look at me as though there was no way I could know what I was talking about.  I hadn't been working out, I had been smoking, and so how could anything I told them about training and healthy lifestyle choices hold any validity?  So I woke up one morning, looked at my wife and asked "What are we doing?".  So we quit smoking and I set out on a path to begin completing items on my bucket list.  I set some short term goals, sprint triathlons, with the end goal being the P.F. Chang's Rock N Roll Marathon Arizona.  

My long term goals are to:

• Qualify for Boston
• Run a sub-3:00 marathon
• Run an ultra
• Complete a full Ironman
• Complete a variety of marathons with personal significance to me

With the inspiration of my kids love for triathlons, and my wife's support, I was able to focus on training and as a family, we enjoyed doing healthy activities together.  I had some age group successes in the sprint triathlons and at "prep" races for the marathon.  I completed the race in 3:38, which was not quite what I was hoping for, but it had been almost 8 years since my last marathon, and I had been battling patellar tendonitis through the final weeks of training and during the race it completely "blew up" at mile 13/14.  But still, this was a success, not six months earlier, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day...now I was not only finishing a marathon, but finishing it well, and was able to feel that I was able to practice what I had been preaching to my kids.  Even Sara became a runner, finding a pure love for the sport, for just getting out there and putting one foot in front of the other with no pressure to compete.

After recovering from the marathon/injury, I set out to improve on my results and start checking off goals on the bucket list.  I signed up for the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon, with the goal of going "sub-3:00" and in the process qualifying for Boston.  While qualifying for Boston is quite an accomplishment in the running community, the qualifying times are on a sliding scale corresponding to your age.  Doing a sub-3:00 marathon is a set in stone time, a time barrier that other runners look at and go "Whoa!"  Go big or go home right?

Training was going great, and the new and additional training routines and techniques I employed were propelling me towards my goals.  In early April, however, after a hard tempo run, I began to experience severe pain in my right quad, and that is when my journey began with FAI, and my journey "Back to the Roads".