Occupation: Survivor Winner and Charity Founder
Age: 37
Residence: New York City
How long have you been a runner?
I've run at various stages in my life. My father was a runner, so I have vivid memories of being asleep on Saturday mornings and then the running group would come over and be all loud talking outside my window, and then they would take off for the run. Ever since I was a little kid, running has been in my life, and I ran with my father. He helped me with my first race when I was about 9 years old. It was only two miles, but it felt like 100 miles back in the day. I have always kind of been athletic. I ended up kind of going more toward soccer and lacrosse back in grade school and high school rather than straight-up running, but I did run track in high school.
How were you at track?
I wasn't great because I basically just ran to stay in shape for my other sports, so I didn't put a lot of like energy into it. I hit puberty early, so I was 10 times bigger than all of the other kids out there, so it always helped me with my speed and endurance.
What did you run when you ran track?
I ran indoor track so I ran...was it the 220 or the 240? It was just a short sprint twice around the indoor track—that was my race. I also did the 440 relays and the high jump. But I did the 220 or the 240—whatever it was—before the high jump, so I always ended up sucking at the high jump because I was so dead from those. I hated it.
When did you start running to stay in shape?
I really hit my groove after college. I played soccer and lacrosse all through college. I did professional soccer for six years, so once I started playing pro, I really started to look at the way I was working out and the way that I was treating certain things. I did a lot of short-type motions up and down, that type of stuff. So distance running, we didn't focus on it. That was something I had to do on my own. It was important to be able to run more mile-to-mile without being winded, so I started training on my own and I really started to like it and it helped my endurance during workouts and matches. My natural frame and my natural body weight I think is more geared toward running and endurance-type sports because I feel like I am getting good at running, short sprinting-type stuff. I was complementing my training with distance and I loved it. I was away from everyone else for about an hour, and I could think about other things besides soccer. By the end, six or seven miles are gone and I feel good.
Have you had any great ideas come to you on a run?
Oh god, yes. One of my hobbies is inventing things like stupid household products or things like that. I sit around and I think up this stuff all of the time. One of my jobs while I played soccer was freelance work for a bunch of advertising and branding companies in New York for products that would go out on the market. So I would go out for an hour run and would come back with 50 or 100 names for whatever product I was working on.
What was the best idea you had on a run?
One of my best ones is the EZ Crunch Bowl, which is a product that keeps your cereal crunchy for an awfully long time.
How does it work?
Imagine a swimming pool with a shallow end and a deep end. You have your cereal on the shallow end and your milk on the deep end and, when you want a little crunch, you just tap it over the edge. So, I have ezcrunchbowl.com which you can go check out, but it came to fruition on a run.
That's awesome!
I don't know if it's awesome, but it's interesting. The things that come to you when you have all of that time on your hands...
