Road to Ironman Arizona 2011 » Personal

Alright, here we go!

Henry — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:43:48 +0000

I had originally wanted to use this blog to chronicle my upbringing up to the present day, sort of like an auto-biography, but for some reason I just never had the muster to bring it to fruition. But now… now I do have something to write about. As of today, this blog will now have a purpose!

15 years ago, I vividly remember waking up on a Sunday morning and stumbled upon this program on NBC. A triathlon. But not just any triathlon. It was the Ironman triathlon. I sat on my couch and watched curiously. I witnessed the stories of these incredible athletes pushing their physical and mental boundaries to their limits. To finish a race that took them through land and water.

2.4 Miles in the ocean.
112 Miles on the bike.
26.2 Miles on foot.

Those are the distances that compose the race. And I wanted to do it.

Roughly 3 weeks ago, my buddy convinced me to go out to Arizona with him to volunteer for the Ironman event out there. He kept mentioning that we had to volunteer in order be able to sign-up for the following year’s event since it sells out so fast. I had no intention of signing up, “I’m just going to train for some marathons this upcoming year,” I kept saying. I was just going out there for the experience and to have some weekend fun. Besides, I can’t swim. How am I supposed to do an Ironman if I can’t swim?

The volunteering was awesome. I was part of the Run SAG team if you’re curious but I won’t go into the details here. Fast forward to Monday morning after the race I found myself standing in line with my buddy. The line to register for next year’s Ironman – November 20, 2011. EEK! About 30 minutes later, I find myself committed. It’s done. I’m registered. No refunds. Name in the system. Done. Deal.

I’ve never run a marathon before. Heck I’ve never even run a half-marathon before.

I’ve never done a triathlon before.

I sink like a rock in bodies of water.

My longest bike ride is about 50 miles over 10 years ago.

I sit at my desk for 8 hours a day.

That’s my triathlon experience in a nutshell. This is going to be the story of a guy that’s going to try to do the seemingly absurd and impossible. This is the beginning of the next 347 days of my life till race day.

Housemate Jacob moved in mid-July

Henry — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:34:51 +0000

Gives life to home. It’s nice having nice people around.

I had an epiphany over the weekend…

Henry — Mon, 17 May 2010 03:10:04 +0000

I wanted to be a doctor. But my cumulative undergrad GPA is too low. Of course at the time I didn’t care much as I was just trying to get out of school and into the workforce as soon as I could. Since when did IT work require you to have good school grades anyways right? So I did some research and I’d basically have to re-do my entire undergrad in order to obtain the med school pre-reqs as well as boost my GPA up to something more respectable. That’s probably another 3 years of undergrad work… probably not gonna happen…

Can we change? Yes we can!

Henry — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:19:06 +0000

Today, Barack Obama was voted to be become the next American President and I watched it live on CNN.

Just some side notes:

CNN.com web development team is freakin’ awesome as well as their whole IT department for pulling it all together. I was especially surprised to see holographic technology used to ‘beam’ people into the studio from remote locations. Never thought I’d see that in my lifetime!