Grip and Hammer comes from many different aspects of sport. We are about blogging on Multi-sport topics (Running, biking, cross-training, etc.) and motorsports.
Let me give a little history of myself and my experiences. As a child, from middle school through college, I ran competitively distances that ranged from 5K (3.1-miles) to half marathons. In high school, I ran all four years as a varsity runner and I have gone to the state championships twice with my school. I also ran in college track and specialized in the 5K and the 3K-Steeple-chase. Also during this time, I competed in Duathlons in the Northwest area and I financed my first racing bike, the Zipp2001.
Running sub-6-minute/mile was easy for me. Then life got in the way of my workouts and soon enough I gained a lot of weight. To be honest, the Playstation did not help my health either. Not only did I discover “laziness” but I embraced it. Now, I run for my health, for weight loss and to hopefully to get back into a “competitive state”. I used to be an assistant cross-country coach at Crescent Valley High School (my alumni high school) and have made many different types of workouts.
Having been competitive to losing weight, you might say that I’ve experienced running on many different levels to accommodate different types of runners. I hope that my experiences and running background will help you achieve your goals as a runner. Over the coming days, weeks, months and hopefully years, you will be able to take my experiences and meet your personal goals, whatever they may be.
As for motorsports, it wasn’t till 1998 that I became interested in cars and racing. I’m not sure exactly what it was but I’m sure that a large part of my interest for cars accelerated once I started playing Grand Turismo on the Sony Playstation. After that, I soon became interested in Mitsubishi FTO, then soon after the Evolution. Once I started following the Mitsubishi Evo I soon grew an interest in rally racing and then fell in love with the Subaru Impreza WRX. Shortly after my return from Japan, I purchased an Impreza 2.5RS and got involved in tuning the car and shortly after that, got into rally racing. In 2003, I started co-driving for Hairpin Racing (Driver: Lee Shadbolt. Team Manager: Tamara Shadbolt). From then on, I haven’t looked back.
In 2004, I went to the SEMA show in Las Vegas and met Kimi Raikkonen. From then on, I started to include my interest in F1 to my arsenal and became a biased fan of Kimi. Over the last couple of years, I’ve learned the rules of F1 and now have a better understanding of the sport and how exciting it can be.
My other future motorsports interests will include LeMans and GT Racing. To this day I still can NOT enjoy NASCAR or any other oval track racing. I understand for spectating it’s great but other than that, it’s still pretty boring to me.
