Kona Journey was inspired from an idea that woke me up at 2am one night. After blogging over the past several years at “Adams Racing” about my triathlon adventures – I felt like the blog was a little too self-serving which is hard to escape when you’re blogging about yourself every week. I felt like the direction of the blog started morphing into just the “thoughts inside my head” and I really wanted to make a change.
As I lay wide awake I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The biggest leaps and bounds I made both physically and mentally in triathlon racing were from reading other triathletes blogs. It was never the ads, articles or forums that taught me what it takes to be great at triathlon. It was the handful of athletes that gave descriptive details about their training and what was going on inside their head. It was the honest ones; the ones that didn’t have anything to hide.
I thought to myself – what could I do to show serious triathletes the day-to-day sacrifice it might take to qualify for Kona aka. The Ironman World Championships? What about on your first try? Qualifying for Kona is the golden ticket of triathlon. Everyone wants to qualify but very few do. How does a mid-30 year old that has a full time job/career, support a stay-at-home mom, two kids and lives on a tight budget qualify for Kona? How does he do it without having the 25+ hours/week to train?
Well, what DOES it take? I hope to show you. I’m registered for my first Ironman - Ironman Coeur d’Alene on June 29, 2014. The plan is to qualify for Kona on my first try and I’m going to reveal every single workout that I do leading up to it. All of the numbers, the emotions, the struggles, the time management and the races leading up – everything will be exposed. I hope to show serious triathletes what it takes to get to that level to qualify so that maybe one day you can do the same thing. If you think qualifying on my first go is impossible, many told me that losing 45 pounds, learning how to swim and bike and qualifying for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships would be impossible to do in two short years but I did it....Qualify or not, I’m hoping between me and my coach that we'll open some eyes on what it REALLY takes to race on the big island.
Who better to reach out to about “Serious Triathlon” then LAVA Magazine? At 2am that night I wrote to LAVA and pitched my idea. They picked it up and starting in January of 2014, you’ll see this blog published on their site.
The goal of this site is to inspire. I would love your feedback – please feel free to comment and thank you for reading!
4 comments:
Perty dern awesome, friend!!!!!!
Looking forward to following the journey.
Wow, I will definitely be following this journey. First off, I like the new blog and I especially like your idea of doing it in hopes your journey will be of service to others. I started reading your old blog right at the time you said you wanted to "go for it"... I think this will be a fantastic insight into what it takes to do your first Ironman at a high level. I am the person that left you the quote from Warren Buffett that "Intensity is the price of excellence." and I appreciate how you let your intensity show in your previous blog. I think you will do a great job of capturing the ups and downs of the whole campaign. Very best of luck to you!! Don't ignore your wife & kids - make them part of the journey!
Does knowing you hope to be there next year change your viewing plans for next week's race? Are you watching online all day? What are you looking at specifically? A lot of people treat Kona as a "victory lap" and go to enjoy the whole experience. How would you approach it if you made it?
Thanks for the comments guys! @Will, definitely bringing along the family in this journey. Expect to see some blog posts from my wife's point of view too! And Kona viewing this week, yes - I've been obsessed with coverage. Last year I did a long ride with the audio playing in my ear and plan on the same this year. The rest I'll watch throughout the day, maybe even hit up a few Kona viewing parties that are happening around town. I really love that almost every picture/video you see online from Kona right now are smiles. They made it! I imagine you're on cloud 9 the entire time you're out there - a life changing experience, something I hope to share with my family this time next year. Thanks for following!
Post a Comment