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Greg Long

Age: 43

Occupation: Mortgage Broker -- owner of White Oak Financial Group

Place of birth: Lakeport, (wine country) Calif.

Q. When did you move to Routt County and what brought you here?

A. We moved here in 2001 after a five-year search for a ski town. We wanted to get out of Orange County and were looking for a ski town (my wife, Jill, is the big skier) that also was a family town to raise our daughter in and a place to grow my mortgage business.

Q. What's the biggest risk you've taken recently?

A. Volunteering to coach the distance runners (which includes my daughter) for the high school track team. It was a risk worth taking.

Q. Describe your morning routine.

A. Up at 5 a.m. -- a cup of coffee and then it is right to the computer to catch up on e-mails and paperwork for my mortgage business. At 7 a.m., I join my wife and daughter for breakfast. Then, I drop my daughter off at school, and my dog and I head into the woods to run, snowshoe or cross-country ski. Back home by 9 a.m. -- shower and then back at the desk by 9:30 a.m., which is when my CA office opens and starts forwarding calls.

Q. Has a book ever changed your life? What was it and why?

A. Not a book, but an article from Track and Field News about Lee Evans and how he ran through pain. It forever changed the way I trained and what limits I set on myself.

Q. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

A. It is not the destination, but the journey, that it is important.

Q. What are the first three things you tell new acquaintances about yourself?

A. I am a runner, I own a mortgage company and I love living in Steamboat.

Q. What did you want to be when you grew up?

A. I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and dreamed of being a marine biologist.

Q. If you could invite any four people to dinner, who would they be and what would you talk about?

A. Well if we have to pick a topic, that would be running, so then the people I would invite would be Steve Prefontaine, Roger Bannister, Emil Zatopek and Bill Bowerman.

Q. Do you collect anything?

A. I don't think so, but my wife says I have a running shoe fetish.

Favorites

Book: "Dune"

Color: Blue

Food: Abalone -- there is nothing better than cooking Abalone on a beach.

Sport to watch: Summer Olympics

Vacation spot: My best vacation ever was a Tour de France tour

Recreational activity: Running

Magazine: Runner's World