coach tawnee

Shame on me for not following up sooner on Damon’s epic seven-day mountain bike race — sorry, we’ve been busy working hard on all his racing since then! Long story short, he crushed the MTB race! He endured some insanely harsh conditions (weather, trails, hills, hills and more hills, etc) and each day pulled through like a champ. It’s so fun to see hard training (mental AND physical) pay off at the “A race” event. To D’s surprise, his finish was catapulted into something more special than he ever anticipated: His wife, Erica, and his son made it out to greet him. This was not in the original plan, and required some tricky planning on Erica’s part. Talk about special… you can see for yourself right below (father and son):

What I want to point out about Damon is not just his epic finish at the BC Bike Race, but his progress in the last year overall. He first came to me in late 2011 with some big goals, the desire to look and feel better, and (most importantly) the hunger to achieve those goals with the right guidance from a coach. Well, he’s had some major success on the race course and in his overall health and well-being! Take a look for yourself…

before and after photos of Damon:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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And more good news: Just last weekend Damon PR’d his half-Ironman time by about 40 minutes (PR=personal record)! Keep in mind, too, that triathlon had only become the main focus for Damon after the MTB race. So within a few months he was able to recover, lay down some solid training (run in particular), and conquer 70.3 miles of swim-bike-run in his best shape to date. Of course, there’s always room for improvement (what triathlete is ever 100% satisfied with a race?!?!), and Damon is now looking forward to hitting it hard again in 2013 with more triathlons, including a full Ironman again next August. Yup, Coach T will be coaching his way to more PRs, you can bet on that! And not just that — I’ll be coaching Erica (wife/mom) as well for the Ironman! They recommend I read up on marriage counseling…jk 😉