My first contact with endurance sport came at 14, when I joined a local mountain bike club. Long, brutal rides across rugged, hilly terrain, sometimes lasting hours. The mix of endurance and speed had me hooked, and it set the direction for the rest of my life.

At 17, I moved into triathlon, racing Olympic-distance events, duathlons, 10Ks, and the occasional half marathon. I was self-coached, and most of what I knew came from books and magazines. That was the problem. I never got the balance of training and recovery right, and in my mind more was always better. The result was constant burnout, frequent colds, and a steady stream of small injuries. It was my first real lesson in why structure matters.

For a few years I stepped away from endurance sport and focused on strength training and Muay Thai. I still ran for fitness and rode indoors, but I didn’t compete. That period turned out to be more valuable than I expected, because the strength and conditioning knowledge I built then is central to how I coach today.

Eventually I was drawn back, this time with running at the center. With a smarter approach and a real grasp of training methodology, my performances jumped further than I thought possible, from the 400 meters all the way to the marathon. After years of trial and error, training had finally clicked.

Then in 2023, an accident jumping stairs tore the ligaments in my ankle and damaged the cartilage. It took running off the table. Instead of losing the fitness I’d spent a lifetime building, I rebuilt it on the bike, at home, in the gym, in hotel rooms on the road. I learned from the inside how to keep an endurance athlete strong when their legs can’t take the impact. Running is on hold for me, and honestly, cycling is what has kept me sane and kept me an athlete ever since.

That experience is the reason CyclingFront exists. I’m not coaching this from theory. I’m living the exact thing my clients are living.