COACHES
Our coaches are husband and wife team Peter & Margaret Denton, who collectively bring over 35+ years of endurance sports experience to the table.
Margaret Denton
Our head triathlon coach lives and breathes all things swim, bike, run with a 4:31 70.3 PR, multiple Boston Marathon finishes and over 15 years of running and triathlon experience.
Margaret believes, from experience, that sport is for everyone. She was a self-proclaimed “non-athlete” all her life, until a friend challenged her to run her first marathon in 2010. Margaret was a runner first, clocking 10 or so marathons before deciding it was time for a next-level challenge.
Margaret dove into triathlon because she wanted to finish an Ironman. Why the Ironman distance? Because an Ironman “sounded impossible and impossible is awesome.” She started an instagram account for accountability, bought a used bike off of Craigslist, and in 6 months, she taught herself to swim 2.4 miles and to ride a bike, finishing Ironman Canada in 12 hours. She was hooked.
What started as a challenge became an obsession. Since, she has been a top-10 age group athlete at IMWC 70.3 distance, finished 2 full Ironman distance races and has won her share of both triathlons and running races, qualifying for the Boston marathon after her second marathon (where she also met her now husband and business partner, Peter Denton).
So, why coaching [we asked]? In her own words, Margaret self-proclaimed that, “I could never be a coach. I get too passionate and care too much about what I do to, y’know, ‘put up with’ (air quotes) athletes who aren’t committed to a coaching partnership.” So when the opportunity literally fell in her lap, coaching was an open door that she stepped into with some apprehension. She quickly found that as much as she was able to bring to the table, her athletes matched her passion for the sport, and not only did coaching allow her to inspire athletes on their journeys, but partnering with incredibly driven and dedicated people had had a profound impact on HER as an athlete and a person.
Margaret is a voracious learner, consuming podcasts, training courses and parsing data-driven methodologies to bring proven coaching practices to her athletes. She believes that writing training plans is about 20% of what she provides as a coach; the other 80% is partnering with her athletes to encourage life / training balance while still bringing out their best, helping to pivot training to life circumstances, and providing the motivation and tools to achieve their health and fitness goals.
Outside of endurance sports, Margaret leads a supercharged life. When she’s not chasing around her active 4-year-old, she’s running not one, but two businesses from her home in sunny SW Florida. She is the Creative Director and owner of Denton Experience, a marketing and design agency. Her passion project is launching a coaching, clothing and lifestyle brand, Bomboom and its sister organization, Bombloom with the goal of bringing life transformation to everyday athletes through sport. In her “spare” (outside of work and training) time, she plays the piano, attends her church, refurbishes furniture, plays mommy & starts businesses.
Peter Denton
Our head running coach is a 2:37 marathoner with race experience in everything from track & field to road racing to full Ironman distance triathlon.
Peter is a lifelong competitive endurance athlete with extensive racing experience from 1600m on the track through the marathon and full Ironman distance triathlon.
Peter grew up watching his dad race triathlons and road races when he was a little kid, and it didn’t take him long to follow in his dad’s footsteps. By the time Peter was 14 he and his Dad ran a sub-5 minute 1600m in the same race at an all-comers track meet. Track and cross country were a big focus for Peter in middle and high school and he earned PR’s of 4:42 for the 1600m, 9:52 for 3200m, and 16:09 for the XC 5K. He also got his feet wet with a few half marathons in high school.
Eventually in his mid 20’s a buddy convinced him to run the California International Marathon, and he went sub 3:00 for his debut, eventually grabbing a 2:37:58 PR at the distance and a 1:13:08 half marathon PR. Peter raced the Boston Marathon twice, placing 218th overall the second time. As an adult he also improved on his 5K time from high school with a 15:52.
Peter started triathlon in his 30’s and went under 10 hours in his 140.6 debut at Ironman Louisville in 2018, though his main priority at most tri races is to be a super-sherpa for his wife Margaret. Margaret and Peter met on the bus to the Boston Marathon start line at in 2012, got married a year later, and have enjoyed sharing their passion for endurance sports ever since.
One of Peter’s driving motivators as a coach is to help people discover their potential as adult athletes and surprise themselves with results they didn’t know were possible.
In addition to being an endurance guru Peter is also a 100-ton boat captain, firefighter/EMT, and avid freedive spearfisherman.