About Me, The Short Version:
I’m Rob Savarese and I’m a Software Engineer and former Air Force pilot who has been a runner since 1972. I started this blog in 2011 to help fellow runners in the same way they have helped me, be transparent about my successes and failures, to talk about what’s worked for me and what hasn’t, and to give support back to the community that’s helped me take my running to a new level. The best way to contact me is to click on the ‘Contact Me‘ link at the top of the page or to follow me on Twitter and send me a tweet to say ‘Hi!’. You can also friend me on Dailymile along with seeing my current race times and history on Athlinks.
About Me, The Long Version:
Rob 1.0:
I grew up on the south shore of Long Island. It was a cool place to be as a kid back in the 60′s and 70′s. You had the beach, plenty of woods to have adventures in and it wasn’t overcrowded. I fell in love with running in 1972 when my Dad and I were watching Frank Shorter take the gold medal in the Olympic Games in Munich. I remember watching Frank run and thinking “I can do that, I want to do that”. Back then I’d get as many of my neighborhood buddies as I could and we’d have a “South Bay Drive” Olympics. We had plenty of short races and I always got smoked by the fast kids in those (I was the short dumpy kid with no speed but I loved sports and played all of them as often as I could). I always managed to get a marathon event in there somehow even though it was tough to get anyone to run it with me. It was twice around the block which seemed like 26 miles to a grade school kid (but in reality was more like 800 meters). I still lost to some skinny, fast kid but I ran it anyway…it was my event.
I played mostly football and soccer through high school but I still ran on my own and loved it. When I got to college I joined the Cross Country team and lettered in the sport.
Stevens Tech Cross Country team - 1986
It was during those years I ran my first marathons and I capped those off with running the 1987 NYC Marathon in 3:18. No chip timing or corrals in those days, it was just gun time no matter how far back in the pack you were. I was working to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon but shortly after college I went on active duty and started a family. As often happens to athletes, the priorities of career and family pushed my running to the side for many years.
Pilot Training Graduation, 1989
I did get to run in some cool places like Diego Garcia, Abu Dhabi and Limestone, ME.
The KC-10 does it all: Air Refueling, Cargo and Passenger transport.
Rob 2.0:
I separated from active duty in 1999 and decided I wasn’t interested in the Commercial Pilot lifestyle. By then I had two small boys and I desperately wanted to be a part of their lives. Being away from home for long stretches was the reason I left the Air Force so I wasn’t about to swap one career for the other. I figured I had nothing to lose by seeing if I could get into the engineering field and I was able to get a position with CSC. I settled into the Database Engineering and Design career field. I left CSC for a brief period for a position at Oracle but then came back to CSC when the travel became to onerous.
Rob 3.0?
Which takes us to current day. I’m not sure where my running is taking me, but I’m excited about it. Last year I never would have thought I’d have a shot at breaking 3 hours in the marathon but as that milestone gets closer I’m starting to think ‘What else is possible?’. I’ll leave you with this…Bart Yasso sent me a quote during a twitter conversation which read “Running isn’t about how far you go, but how far you’ve come.”
