For my first contribution to the I.Am.Specialized site, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about how I came to be contributing to this blog in the first place. I guess I should spend a little bit of time talking about why I think Specialized wanted me, but that’s mostly guesses. And then I’ll talk about what I know for certain, which is why I wanted to become a part of the Specialized family – why I think that I.Am.Specialized.

So let’s start with a little bit of background about me, Why did Specialized offer me a place on the triathlon team? You’d have to ask them to be certain, but I’ve got my theories. Basically, I know what I told them that I offered, and I’m writing this, so I’ll go out on a limb and say that I tricked them well enough. The interesting part of my life started in college, where I actually started to grow up and figure out what I wanted out of life. Before that, I was just a regular kid who liked sports, didn’t like school, and was at the epicenter of the occasional not-so-dramatic bit of drama. In college, I discovered two things that I became very passionate about. The first was rowing, which was my introduction to endurance racing and which was my primary interest for my four years at Princeton University in New Jersey. The second passion, which I only came to be truly passionate about after I graduated was engineering.

A year behind a desk after college was enough for me, and after discovering triathlon in early 2003, I decided that I’d see if I could make a career out of it, without really knowing what that meant. Over the next six years, I spent all of my time either training, racing, or thinking about training and racing. I didn’t come to the sport from a swim, bike, or run background. The extent of what I knew about endurance sport came from rowing, which basically means that I knew how to suffer and how to work hard, both of which would serve me well. It also became apparent that triathlon is a technology heavy sport. So I figured I could “think” my way to an advantage. I made a lot of mistakes in the process – what seems to make sense and the truth are not always the same thing. But it seemed that there were plenty of problems in triathlon that you could solve by thinking harder. At the very least, I knew that with limited experience, I needed to get the most of the training that I was doing, both by maximizing the training and by maximizing my speed for given effort in racing.

It was that approach, which defined my existence day after day, week after week, and month after month, finally paid off in a big way when I won my first Ironman in Penticton, British Columbia at the end of August 2009. It was after that win that I felt  I had the results to really lend credibility to the technical approach I take to training and racing. And that’s what I felt I brought to Specialized.

But what was it that made me think that Specialized was the right fit for my approach? I think there are a few companies that follow a technical approach to building bikes. Specialized is one of them. The Shiv. The SL3. The Transition. These bikes are all works of engineering beauty. But Specialized extends that same focus to all the other products they make. I actually first started using Specialized shoes and helmets in 2008, simply because I thought they were the best available.  The equipment is first rate, but it’s really the processes that lead to these products that I believe in. Process is what matters to me. Process allows you to recreate success over and over and over.

There are also a few companies that really value bike fit. But no other bike company does it to the extent that Specialized does, with SBCU. As one of the co-instructors of the Slowtwitch FIST triathlon bike fit workshops, bike fit is like a religion to me. And it’s the same way at Specialized. The bikes are made to fit. And there is a system in place to make sure that riders who end up on a Specialized fit aboard it in an optimal way. A great bike is only really great if the rider fits aboard it optimally.  And Specialized is committed to that. And that is a commitment we share.

Ultimately, I felt like Specialized offered me a home. They have a long history of forging lasting relationships with athletes – Peter Reid, one of my true heroes in the sport, still is involved with Specialized, the same company whose bikes he rode to an Ironman World Championship.  I hope I can have an equally successful and lasting relationship. I.Am.Specialized. And hope I will be for a long time to come.