One day in the summer of 2004 Charles was eating lunch with a few of his coworkers in front of Academic Surge. His friend Paul Dayton casually mentioned that there was a triathlon coming up that weekend and that Charles should check it out. The rest is history. Charles is now hooked on triathlons and is a solid member of the team.

In training, Charles is a machine. When he first joined the team in Fall 2004, Charles didn't have a road bike so he started doing the cycling workouts on his mountain bike. Instead of sticking to the slower, easier cycling workouts, he tackled hard rides with some of the best cyclists on the team and managed to hang on, despite being on a mountain bike. When he finally got his road bike all the hard work paid off and he became a blazing fast cyclist.