To complete an Ironman is a life long ambition and goal. It’s not something new to me but it has remained elusive in its accomplishment. I first heard about Ironman triathlons when I was watching ESPN in my hotel room while on holiday. I was in awe, shock and emotion by the sheer courage and dedication of a competitor who was over 60 and promised her late husband to complete the Kona Ironman on a bike which he had left to her. Later at Stanford one of my class mates was a real life Ironman competitor and hearing him talk of the hours and hours of training he had put in to complete the most amazing race in the world fueled my interest.
Finally over some festive Christmas drinks in 2005 my house mate and I decided to enter the UK Ironman to be held in August 2006. We gave up 7 months of alcohol, late night partying and put in hours of swim training, cycling and running in preparation. Then in july just a month away from the event I crashed my bike broke my wrist. I ended up at the Stanford hospital where the doctor reassured me that they could “pin” my wrist together so I could compete in the race. I kindly declined the US$10,000 option instead choosing to go on holiday in Thailand and nurse my broken wrist. Just as well because there was no way I would have kept up with my house mate Geoff who would go on and finish the event in under 13 hours.
4 years later I would line up to the start of the Hainan 70.3 (Half Ironman) and complete the grueling event in 6 hours 43 minutes. Despite my elation at completing the event all I could think of was doing “the real thing”.
Fast forward to 2012. I now have several Olympic distances under my belt, a handful of marathons and a 70.3. After many years of talk it’s time to give it another shot. This time I’ll have a great friend Tevis joining me in this epic journey of a year of training culminating in 3.8KM of swimming, 180 KM of cycling and 42 KM of running – hopefully finishing in under 17 hours to the Ironman classic words of “Adrian Li – YOU are an Ironman”.
