I sit here on a beautiful Boulder Thursday morning, drinking coffee, watching Paige read books, and feeling myself finally having turned the corner from Spring accomplishments and looking to the summer events.  Flo Rida is humming on the radio and Paige gets up to do a little dance between books. Her dance is a side to side shuffle with a huge grin and then a quick turn that normally makes her dizzy. Honestly, I could sit here all day and watch little P quickly page through books, looking to me for approval from time to time.  However, I am going to leave her, Lara, and the Bogart for about two weeks this summer for what I am considering an adventure/opportunity of a lifetime.

Late last year I applied to race for Team4Mil (T4M), a team of all military and former military members on an 8 man Race Across America(RAAM) team.  I was notified in March that I would be asked to ride with the team and I jumped at the opportunity. Most of you have heard of RAAM through the ABC Wide World of Sports and then into the present day because it was all about crazy men and women riding sleep deprived across country in 8-12 days.  It is still that, but now there are some growing team categories.  This year, there are 18 eight-man teams and it a competitive race .  Team4Mil was second last year to another all-military team from the U.K. that shares a primary goal with T4M of raising awareness for wounded warrior programs.  Military precision and discipline are pretty important to this race because both teams are back this year both with a good shot at breaking the course record of 129.5 hours or 5 days 9 hours and 3 minutes.

RAAM is an intriguing event that I doubt I will ever do solo, but it is one that I always wanted to grab my seven best friends/cyclists and head across country as fast as we could.  I now know that this event is VERY complicated and I am not so interested in trying to organize a team anymore. I am finding being a part of another extension of the military into the sports world the best mix.  The founding aspect of this team is it’s connection to the Wounded Warrior Project.  Therefore we are a 501.c3 and will be pushing out the idea of WWP opportunities and funding for their programs.  It truly is the best of all worlds for me, as I do some true giving back to the warriors I once led.  If you are interested in giving please go to the Team4Mil page www.team4mil.org and look to the PayPal link and donate.

In the coming weeks I will talk a little more about RAAM and my training.  If this is your first time back to my site, you will notice it is recently re-done. This the first blog since the re-work.  I hope you like it.  The photo on the front is from Ironman Wisconsin 2011 (hopefully I will go back this year) where my performance was not so great, but I got a chance to shed some pride and show my patriotism on 9-11.
More soon.