Grant's Blog

Family:

I’m happily married to Brooke Lee Lerdahl since July 2010. We met fall of 2009 and started dating shortly after that. I proposed April 3rd at around 10:30 pm. We got married July 31st in the Draper Utah Temple. Brooke has been more supportive than I could have imagined with all the stuff I try to cram into my life. We keep a pretty good balance.

Oldest of 4 kids. Two brothers and one sister. Julia, seventeen years old, is training for her first half marathon. Matthew, fourteen years old, is captain of his club rugby team, Aaron, ten years old, is waterboy for Matthew’s team.

My dad did some cycling and I did my first two century (100 mile) rides on his old Cannondale that was older than I was ( I was 17). My parents have been extremely supportive in my racing.

Besides sports my family is all talented with music and art. We have about 8 guitars, two ukuleles, and a piano that all get used.

Triathlon Experience:

32 races, 8 sprint distance overall wins, I don’t know how many age group wins, former president of the Brigham Young University Triathlon Club.

I was a competitive church basketball team power forward growing up but I slowly started getting more and more tired of the poor sportsmanship that sometimes comes with team sports. I didn’t like the complaining about refs and other competitors I saw at every game. Thats one thing I love about endurance sports. When you get beat its because the person who beat you was stronger on that day. There are no excuses to endurance sports.

I started mountain biking for fun when I was 16. Growing up in Bountiful Utah it was pretty easy to find some fun trails around the house. I started road cycling after I got my Boy Scout merit badge for cycling. I realized it was a great way to exercise and push myself. I rode often with Martine Larios who lived down the street from me. He only rode hills, period. I got decent at climbing. It was Martine that challenged me to do the century rides and always pushed me in my workouts. Martine was a great training partner because he would always convince you to push yourself and set higher goals.

By now I love working out and pushing my body to new limits. Two of my best friends were on the high school swim team. We called them the ab squad because of their ripped “6 packs.” Naturally this inspired me to join the swim team. I don’t know if I knew much about triathlons at the time. Maybe I had heard of them but I’m sure I didn’t know much. While I was on the swim team my aunt, a formal all american runner, convinced me to try my first triathlon. I was loving the race until I got lost at near the end of the bike portion. I think I was in about 4-8th place at the time. I was pretty upset but defiantly hooked. I knew I could race pretty well and since then I’ve improved every year.

Other Hobbies and interesting shtuff:

Figure Sculpture (I’ve been sculpting things since I was 4) and Classical Guitar (played since I was 10)

I speak french and some spanish

I’m a junior at Brigham Young University studying Business Finance