After reading some of this post, you may say to yourself…”This has exactly nothing to do with women’s triathlon, cycling and running.” But give us a paragraph or two. We’ll try to bring it together.
Like us, if you’ve been watching the news recently, you may be doubting humanity a bit. The week started with missiles being lobbed into Israel. People were killed and inevitably the retaliation began. According to the reports, the best that can be hoped for is a cessation in the violence, not anything resembling peace.
Then, news came out that a civilian airliner had been shot down and hundreds of innocent people perished. Our hearts sank even more as the individual stories began to come out.
Now to be clear, we are a women’s athletic wear provider and we don’t for a minute believe anyone wants to hear about our views on these events. That being said, we’re also citizens of the U.S. and we frequently talk about how proud we are to manufacture our gear in America. So, hopefully that gives us a bit of a license to say this....”We are incredibly grateful that we live in a country that is secure enough for people to pursue activities like biking, running, swimming and triathlon.”
We’re also genuinely indebted to the men and women who make sure we stay secure. We’re talking about the people who serve in our armed forces. Now, we have done posts in the past about individuals who serve and we could probably do many, many more and still not have written enough. Today, however, we’d like to call attention to and thank someone who is a bit more behind the scenes. This individual goes out of his way to make sure our heroes in uniform get at least some of the recognition they deserve.
He’s an amazing athlete, a fascinating person and a down right nice guy (unless, of course, you say anything bad about Texas). His name is Mike Rouse.
We mentioned that Mike is an amazing athlete and to make sure you don’t doubt us on this point, let us give you a few of his stats:
- Marathons Completed: 253
- 50 Mile Race Completed: 62
- 100 Mile Races Completed: 17
- Ironman Races Completed: 7
- Ultraman Races Completed: 5
We assure you, these are not typos. Now, the other thing we’d like to mention is how Mike supports our military. He’s on the Board of an organization called “Got Your Back”. The Got Your Back Network works to help military families who have lost a spouse or parent while serving. Mike also works with a group called 31 Heroes and he’s involved with the fund raising race “Joggin for Frogmen”.
Speaking of Joggin for Frogmen, Mike will be the Master of Ceremonies at the event on July 26th. But, not surprisingly, he’ll be doing a little more than just being the MC. Ok, maybe “little” isn’t quite the right word, he’ll actually be running for 24 hours straight in honor of men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country! Amazing. Just amazing.
If you’re interested in supporting Mike in his run, you can donate by registering as a virtual runner on this site JogginforFrogmen.com/SanDiegoCA.
Finally, (and fortunately) Mike took the time to memorialize his amazing personal story in a book called “Zero to 60”. Coeur just purchased four copies of the book and we’ll be giving three of them away in the near future (keeping number four for ourselves to read).
So there you have it. Our detour away from race reports and athlete updates. As we said in the beginning, while we are a women’s endurance sports company, we’re also Americans and we’re very appreciative to the people who help create an environment that allows us to do what we love.
Coeur Sports. Provider of women’s triathlon, cycling, running and triathlon clothing. Proudly manufactured in the USA.