My Journey to the Boulder Half Ironman

Practical EMS

I have no experience with triathlons. I would have never considered myself athletic. I've run one race longer a 5k my entire life. I decided that a half ironman would be a very ambitious race to train for and complete.

I'm a big believer in trying hard things that put you outside of your comfort zone to help improve yourself as a human. You don't even need to know everything about a difficult task before you start. Colin O'Brady talks in his book, The 12 Hour Walk, about life's 1's and 10's. In his many physical accomplishments, like hiking across Antarctica, he has had a lot of 1's: almost dying, being so physically exhausted that he thought this task was going to prove impossible. But he claims that these "1's" are there so you can experience the 10's in life: finishing a task so big that no other human can claim to have finished.

This is what the half ironman represented for me. An ambitious task that sounded almost impossible. It required me keeping a lot of commitments to myself. It required me to start training without all the head knowledge already in place and learn along the way. There were a lot of 1's in this journey but it was totally worth it for the 10 of crossing that finish line and seeing my wife and two girls waiting for me. Whatever your ambition I want to encourage you to get started. You don't have to know all the ends and outs. You don't have to even feel confident you can finish. Just start. Take little steps each day and the finish line with be there before you know it.

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