Ryan - ProfilesArchive

About Me

I hate filling out these things...
I grew up in the lovely small town of Blaine, WA (Go Borderites!) which I pretty much left as soon as I could but I love to go back and visit. I spent several years in Seattle and now I live in Music City USA - Nashville, Tennessee. Yeeeee-Haaaaawww!!
Not much else to say - I miss Seattle and the Northwest (especially my friends) but Nashville is pretty cool and I'm building a nice little life for myself here.
"The miracle isn't that I finished, the miracle is that I had the courage to start" - John "The Penguin" Bingham (my running hero)
"Work hard, play hard. Work harder, play harder."(InnerStrength team motto)
"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." - Abe Lincoln
"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." - Lloyd Dobler

My Interests

seattle seahawk football, cycling, running, food, country music, beer, good movies and conversations, road trips, exploring new places, my Wii, Guitar Hero, Texas hold 'em - this doesn't make me sound incredibly well rounded but I swear I am!
Life is too short for bad food, bad coffee, powdered dairy products, and bad beer.

I'd like to meet:

Diane Court. Laura Flynn Boyle, Tina Fey, other smart, hot, funny women who also could maybe kick my ass. Also Anderson Cooper, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Music:

Mostly classic country (especially 70's80's), but I'm pretty open to just about anything these days. My iPod will go from Dolly Parton to Metallica to Death Cab for Cutie to Neil Diamond to Sister Sisters in the span of 10 minutes and I will sing along with all of it.

Movies:

Way too many to list but lately I've enjoyed: Juno, Grey Gardens, and my new "must see" King of Kong - Fist Full of Quarters, seriously everyone should see this film.
Also some classics - the original Star Wars Trilogy, Rudy, The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the Muppet Movie. Also anything by Cameron Crowe (except Vanilla Sky because that one sucked)

Television:

I've become addicted to Grey's Anatomy. What can I say? A clever show about Seattle doctors with lots of scenic shots of the city sucked me right in. Thank god the writer's strike is over and my life can get back to normal!
I also never miss My Name is Earl and The Office and I've been known to watch hours of Law & Order in a sitting (especially SVU - Detective Bensen = hot). I also enjoy Entourage, Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Iron Chef America and I've recently been introduced to Dexter and am eagerly waiting for season 2 on dvd.

Books:

I just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and it made me want to start growing/raising all my own food. Next up is The United States of Arugula by David Kamp.
Some of my favorites are: The Outsiders by SE Hinton, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, No Logo by Naomi Klein, The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman, The Courage to Start by John Bingham and various others that I can't think of right now.

Heroes:

Lloyd Dobler

My Blog

You already are.

At some point during this training process this race became a symbol for me of a lot of different things in my life. Getting through this, not giving up, pushing myself, believing in myself - all of ...
Posted by Ryan on Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:54:00 PST

2:22:00

Too exhausted and excited to post much more but it's all over and I did great. 13.1 miles, 2 hours 22 minutes.
Posted by Ryan on Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:33:00 PST

Pre-race (and general life) inspiration

My trainer Matt just sent us one of our many inspirational emails leading up to the marathon on Saturday and this one hit me harder than usual so I thought I would share:"Tonight, . . .and each night ...
Posted by Ryan on Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:17:00 PST

Last training run

(I wrote a long blog post last night and MySpace ate it so I'll try and recreate as much of it as I can)This morning was my last training run with InnerStrength before the CMM. We met at 5:30 (good l...
Posted by Ryan on Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:48:00 PST

Ready

After dealing with this knee thing for the past month or so, I've been a little nervous about the Country Music Half Marathon coming up. I haven't run over 9 miles this season and that was before I g...
Posted by Ryan on Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:55:00 PST

Spring!

Well it’s been a busy month or so since I last posted. I spent a week in San Antonio for a conference, came home for a few days and then headed out to the Pacific NW for the beautiful wedding o...
Posted by Ryan on Sun, 06 Apr 2008 11:59:00 PST

SNOW!!!

We are under a "winter storm warning" here in lovely Nashville, TN. They are saying it could be the worst snow storm in 5 years here, and by "they" I mean whatever news channel I happened to be watch...
Posted by Ryan on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:48:00 PST

Still sidelined

Still sitting out with a bum knee :( I'm starting to fear (ok, I feared this all along but didn't want to say it outloud) that I have another meniscus tear. I did that almost 3 years ago and had to ...
Posted by Ryan on Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:43:00 PST

What did the fish say when he swam into a concrete barrier?

Damn!Bad jokes aside...I am not having a good night. Amanda and I went out for our usual Tuesday night run (we're down to just the two of us now because of injuries). We were heading from Vanderbilt...
Posted by Ryan on Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:49:00 PST

Tired, hungover and very proud of myself

I think I just had one of the best runs of my life, which is pretty amazing given the circumstances. Amanda, my running buddy and I went to see Brad Paisley last night downtown. It was a great show,...
Posted by Ryan on Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:07:00 PST