I hated high school. Admittedly, I was a dork, but still, aren’t most kids at that age? On top of my dork-ness, I was also a late bloomer physically. I didn’t top out until my senior year—the last three months of it. Because of this, I grew up as the little guy and was often pushed around or made fun of for it.

When I was younger and the same size as everyone else, I was an all-star baseball player. But once high school came, my growth stagnated like molasses in January. Meanwhile, my teammates were busy slugging home runs and discussing electric shavers. I got heckled off the baseball team—you can only be called “shorty” and “pipsqueak” so many times.

Besides, or perhaps in conjunction with, my notoriety as a dork, I was also known in school as a mountain biker. The only other two sports I could play in which my size was not an issue were tennis and running. I decided to run cross-country, figuring it would be good cross-training in preparation for the Month of Mud—a notoriously cold, wet and, yes, muddy, series of mountain bike-slash-cyclocross races that took place around Pittsburgh in October and November.