Thank You Cards

Well its pretty much over now, the whole Evotri voting thing and thank god. Tonight is the final night of tabulations. I won't even ask anymore, there is far to much of that if you scroll down.

I am writing and posting this before knowing if I made the top 3 for the second slot available. Regardless of the outcome I want to say my thank you's to everyone for putting up with me through this. I think most of you got my thank you message after the first round and like it or not I will send some sort of closure letter in a few days with the outcome of this round.

If I don't make the team this weekend, I will not be going for the last spot if its a voting contest. Between the last month of vote garnering and an Ironman two weeks away I just can't bring myself to the fight. I will continue to be an advocate for the team in some capacity.
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The above statement was written a few day ago in preparation for the end of the voting. What follows is my thoughts after reading a post today.

New Inclusion: I agree with Nancy's post about volunteering and working on the local level and understand her thoughts on this voting process. I want to recognize her for saying something that needs to said from the other side. It is not my personality to sell myself so strongly and because I consider her a close contact, we raced at Ironman Florida together, she got a copy of all my letters. I am sure she got dozens more from others. For as frustrated as she is with the whole solicitation process, I guarantee I was more uncomfortable having to write and send out the messages over the last month. I won't apologize for sending them, I believe in what I did. Had I known earlier I wouldn't have bothered her, of course in hind site I maybe should have known. But she has a good point and if I don't make the team, I have a plan for that too.

But now I'm late, I have to go lead a bunch of school kids on a bike and run. See I am volunteering my Friday afternoons to a school district teaching kids and their parents how to finish a triathlon next month. I said she was right.
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Thank you everyone who has participated on my behalf.

Have Fun.

Evo-Vote through Friday

VOTING HAS BEEN EXTENDED THROUGH THE END OF THE MONTH.

SCROLL DOWN FOR MY NEWEST ENTRY.

Don't forget to vote for me to be a member of Team EvoTri. Copy my URL above or copy the red text here: http://www.commonmansyndrome.com/ and send an email to vote@evotri.com With your help I can become the 2nd of 3 members added to the team this year. My Round 1 application is HERE. My round 2 application is HERE.

Spread the word, grab people who come into your office. Please be my champion.

Voting Extended One Week

I don't know if I should throw up or be excited. If this was a triathlon it'd be no contest- little bit of both. Voting is now open to all email accounts through March 28th, next Friday. You no longer have to go to the website or use the EVOTE button.

send emails to:
vote@evotri.com
in the Subject line put:
commonmansyndrome

Here is an opportunity to close the door on the voting. All of you know that I am an advocate for you, my friends. I now need you to be mine. All of you have at least five people that you know who will vote for me if you just ask them too. Go deep today. People want to believe in the goodness of others and have faith on days like Good Friday that what they do speaks to who they are.

Ask your friends, family and co-workers to vote for me today, this weekend and next week. Start grabbing people who come into your office and asking if they have voted, put the opportunity in front of them. Fire up the house computer before Easter dinner and have your visiting family do it from their online email accounts. Put your teenage sons and daughters to work with their friends.

One more week. Does someone have a bucket nearby?

Sidenote: Please do not vote multiple times from the same email address.

Making the Team: 2008 Endeavor

Thanks for reading! If you think I should be the next fully-sponsored member of Team Evotri, please write down the URL of this web site and have it ready for voting when you click the EVOTE button below. Thank you!

To vote: Click the EVote links provided or compose an email to vote@evotri.com and put Common Man Syndrome in the subject.

When I look at the sport of endurance racing I see a need for stewardship. It seems every professional sport is plagued with drug scandals; EPO, blood doping, steroids, the list goes on. Yet while cheaters in baseball and football are treated with kids gloves from their organizations and with ambivalence from their fans; all professional endurance athletes are unfairly typecast by one rotten apple. One baseball player caught cheating is scolded but loses no prestige or income; with one cheating endurance athlete entire cycling teams are cut from races, entire teams lose medals. It is because of this that I believe marketing and sponsorships will edge away from elite athletes and begin targeting and creating age group teams. I believe EvoTri is at the tip of the spear in this regard by providing a team and a forum for age groupers to train and race like the pro's. It is only through united fronts, like EvoTri, that voices become loud enough to affect an entire community. And the endurance community needs someone to be that loud voice right now.

What EvoTri sponsors are looking for is consistency and inspiration. Start a blog they say? I have been a blogger for over three years, helping create the triathlon blogesphere this team is seeking to tap into. In that time I have written almost 1,400 posts dedicated to not just my passions, but motivated others and been an inspiration to others. I have been a steady voice for people struggling with their health and who they think they are as a person, and if I can do it, anyone can.

I feel a responsibility to be a model for triathlon and I think I represent our sport well. I have written of tremendous success and awful failures. I try to relate how hard and how satisfying triathlon can be to non-triathletes. I believe it is only through steadfast examples of writing down dreams and overcoming adversities that people make sense of what they want to accomplish in life and only then do they begin to envision who they could potentially be. Isn't that the cornerstone of EvoTri's mission statement?

I am not a athlete of noticeable regard or talent. I have no discernible strength or speed or balance. What I have is tremendous willpower and Heart. I am self deprecating and have a dry sense of humor, but take life seriously and love people. If you have the inclination, this is my story.

I am a warrior for this sport. With all my heart I want to increase the number of people involved in triathlon. I will be an asset to EvoTri and the sponsors because I have the same mission they have, to grow this sport. We can create a marketing legacy and show that age groupers are a worthwhile investment.

CommonManSyndrome

Another Go Round

Well folks, I've decided to tryout for EvoTri's next team member spot. I want to believe it was so close last time. Charlie sure seems like a swell guy and fitting right in. I hope I get to be his team mate. Starting on Saturday you will be able to vote for me again and tell your friends and family to do likewise.

BTW Charlie has started his own blog, TriCajun, how fitting. Load him into your subscriptions. I feel like he is going to do really well online.

I will upload my EvoTri entry late Friday or early Saturday as I have a 100+ mike ride planned for 6:30am. No rest for Ironmen. The good news is it will be about 80*. Neener Neener.

Are we there yet?

So many levels to that question this Friday. Top Three?

1. Is this surgery going to work for Mo?
2. Will I go crazy during the 30+ hour 190 mile Ragnar Relay with five others in a Suburban?
3. How will the EvoTri vote end?

The doctors convinced each other and then Mistress that this surgery is going to be a good thing for Mo. He is having his tonsils and adenoids removed and scraping and restructuring his sinuses. Its a long painful procedure that will have him recovering for over a week. The debate was how individually the procedures are 'routine' but when done all at once and considering he has zero immune system without drugs it is considered experimental. This does nothing for his more dangerous colitis issue.

Ragnar will be a long day for me. I don't sleep well when traveling. I haven't met three of the six in my vehicle before. Its one thing to have a kick ass 7 mile run workout but when you repeat it every 6 hours and then just sit in a car seat for the time in between and not getting normal food, who knows what will happen. I do look forward to this race. It was my idea for us to do it. I think it will be one of those very memorable races of my life. Gee, maybe us bloggers should do one next year. Only need twelve per team and there all over the country.

I have really been stumping for EvoTri votes this week. In some regards I am glad it is a week of voting as it takes time to plan and execute such a campaign. But not knowing what place I'm in or how anyone else is doing, it can make you think to much about it in a unhealthy way. I always tend to look at it as I am in the back of the pack, don't take anything for granted, obstacles will come up, just work as hard as I can to finish strong. Gee, maybe a life lesson there. Believe it or not the part that I dwell on the most right now is that regardless of the outcome I won't be able to do a proper thank you or congratulatory post until the end of the weekend; after the relay, after taking a turn with Mo and after my century ride on Sunday.

No matter how it ends, though I hope and prefer it ends well for me, I am so humbled and appreciative of all the people that took the time to vote for me and send the messages out. I received so many emails from people saying, "Hey Comm's, heres a response from so and so about voting for you."

Have Fun.

One last chance to win it all

Making the final round of voting on EvoTri has been quite the experience for me and has left me feeling rather odd.

When you watch my video you see that I am a giver not a taker, another way of saying that I am far more solicitous of others than myself. So it is so strange for me to be on this campaign to get votes just trying to crank out more and more like a jockey whipping his horse. He doesn't want to hurt the horse, but without pushing the horse harder the jockey will lose. I feel like a jockey right now, just constantly whipping my readers and friends to vote for me in this pursuit when the last thing I ever want is for them (you) is feeling I am abusing our relationship, being a taker.

Friday night I got a bit too anxious about round 2 and fired off a few emails to well connected friends for new sources of votes. It was impulsive and in the end I felt bad. I have lost count of the emails I have sent or received during this process. This isn't the hardest thing I have gone through, (pleaz) but today, this week and of course last week, its predominately on my mind going through all the range of emotions and thoughts.

Making this team means a great deal to me as I must suppose it does to all those still in the running. I do not believe that this can be accomplished by one man and a couple emails. It has to be a group effort of like minded people who rally behind the cause. I am not asking anyone for money or to mail anything, there is no financial investment to sell someone on...just me. Just a Common Man with no serious athletic ability but fierce willpower and deep empathy.

So yet again...I have sent out another beautiful letter from mom who can say things so much better than I can. I can only ask that each of you who received a copy send it to everyone you know with a personal message asking for it to be acted on and forwarded again. If you didn't receive a copy and want to be a part of the cause, let me know and I will forward it to you to start the thread anew.

How much harder do I push to be the final victor? How hard can I push? In a triathlon its always just about me, alone, against the course and the clock. In this vote process I have to rely so much on the generosity of...well, everyone.

I am not used to being carried and it leaves me unsteady, confused and unsure of myself.

Round 2 mid point

Just beating the drum here. Please tell everyone you know to vote for me by Saturday night by sending an email to vote@evotri.com with Commodore Round 2 in subject line. I have been giving out post-its with the evotri web address and to vote for me.

I have one more round to make the team but have to give it my all this round. Leave no stone unturned. Tell everyone.

Round 2 Round-Up

"My fine, fine people..." -Bolder in Boulder

First I would really like to address the the EvoTri member who is doing the vote tally's. I sincerely want to thank that person, not because I made it to Round 2 but because I can only imagine the stress that person is under to tabulate and sort what must have been thousands of votes in just 72 hours. This person has a job and probably a family and training to do and other commitments yet he/she must have spent hours pouring over emails only to do it again starting today. Thank you.

I could not have survived Round 1 without you, the readers and voters. Thank you. Having never run for office, I now have some idea of the enormity it takes to run a campaign. I could not be here today without you, in not just this sponsorship opportunity, but in my life, I now see so clearly the reaping that occurs when good seeds are sown.

Mistress and I were up until 11pm Wednesday night shoring up votes over the phone to those last minute friends and family who we wanted to make sure had done their part. I am so proud of my wife for spending hours on the phone calling her friends around the world and asking for them to watch my video and participate.

I hit the sack at 11:45 and was up at 3:45 for a two hour trainer ride before work.

Round two voting I hope will go easier, even though the competition will be harder. Earlier today an email from my mom was sent to most everyone in my address book. Its a grassroots effort to create something more organic than just calling people up and asking to vote. Please forward the letter to all that you can. It's our hope that it just cascades into thousands of inboxes and I move to the next round on Sunday.

If you want your were overlooked a copy, I apologize. To request a copy to start your own thread, click my photo top right and my email button will be on the next page.

I need your help once again to make Round 3. I sometimes find myself putting too much emphasis or importance on this when I write and have to correct myself, but I take seriously the importance I put on making this team, not just for me but the future of other people like me, the Common Man, being able to participate from a wider assortment of sponsors in the future.

Thanks. I mean it.

A new day...

Wow. I have to tell you by yesterday afternoon I was seeing stars in my eyes and little black swirly things. I woke up okay, as if my flu was gone from my body but I had a headache that was flooring me. Not the same type of headaches I get from my concussion or from sinus pressure, just a stabbing, throbbing, almost puke at a moments notice pain in my head.

I ended up going to see Jeff, my training partner and chiropractor, and after an hour of acupuncture and therapy I was a completely new man. I am a new man.

All my energy was back and strangely enough any mental misgivings I had about missed training went away too. Now I am staring at 53 days to Ironman and while not at square one, I have a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.

Shorter term I have my first triathlon camp of the year on Friday, with 11 kids this time and a few adults too. Mo's surgery is next Friday, the same day I start Ragnar's 190 mile relay next week. I am not sure if I have mentioned that before so I will make sure to post on that soon as a distraction to the EvoTri voting going on.

Please remind one more person today to send an email to vote@evotri.com and put Commodore in the Subject. Today is the last day for Round 1.

Thanks.

Get the word out

Not even a day into the EvoTri vote and I want to thank everyone who has done their part. I am simply numb with the votes I have received from you great people.

I am truly blessed to make it this far and can only make it to Thursday with your aid.

I know I don't have the most viewed blog in the Tri-Alliance but I want to crash the servers at EvoTri World Wide Headquarters. If some of you would put up a post for your daily blog readers to vote for me by sending an email to vote@evotri.com with Commodore on the Subject line, I would really appreciate it. Or go covert and forward a message off to your email list asking them to support me.

To view all ten applicants go to the EvoTri website.

One more vote can make the difference....

Team EvoTri Round 1

I am fortunate enough to have made it to Round 1 of the EvoTri video application. The top ten applications can be found at the EvoTri website through Wednesday.

Please vote for me as per the rules from the website:

And now, tell us who YOU think best answers the contest questions below by sending and email to vote@evotri.com with the name of the entrant in the subject line. As we're expecting a deluge of voting, for efficiency purposes emails will not be opened. You may only vote once, multiple votes from the same email address will not be counted.