Decathletes Jeremy Taiwo & Tim Duckworth let this knucklehead in on their podcast...

It's not too often that I appear on a podcast, but a couple of weeks ago, I taped an episode of "Inside the Oval" with 2016 US Olympian in the decathlon Jeremy Taiwo (left/photo by Paul Merca) and 2019 British world championships decathlete Tim Duckworth.

In this first of a two-part podcast on "Inside the Oval", I talk about my humble beginnings in the sport of track & field, starting at Sharples Junior High School in south Seattle to Franklin HS, and to the University of Washington, where I was a mediocre distance runner on the cross country team.

We then talked about how I got into the media side of the sport, including my stint as the assistant director of communications at the 1984 Women's Olympic Marathon Trials in Olympia, to my first freelance television job working the 1984 NCAA track & field championships and meeting the sprints analyst on the telecast, a man by the name of Orenthal James Simpson.

We talk a little bit about some of the things that I've seen in the sport, and refer to the feats of folks like Joan Benoit Samuelson, Lisa (Larsen) Rainsberger, Jeremy's dad and two-time Nigerian Olympian Joseph Taiwo, pole vaulter Toby Stevenson, as well as having a few laughs at my expense, including my running the media 800 at the 2001 world track & field championships in Edmonton.

Here's a direct link to part 1 of the podcast: