sommerfliesby

Saturday afternoon at either 2 or 3 NBC will be broadcasting the Ironman World Championships from Kona, Hawaii. One of my good friends and a high-school cross-country teammate of mine will be featured in a vignette throughout the broadcast. His name is Brian Breen, and he entered a lottery to get into the race (only 50 entries are picked out of thousands) and won. Problem was, he was out of shape and had never done even a 1/2 Ironman! He grabbed the chance by the balls and started training his butt off and decided not only to represent himself, but also to raise money in support of another Ironman athlete stricken with ALS (Lou Gerigs Disease). This fall, he contacted me and asked if I would help train him for the bike leg, so I dragged him through a couple 80 to 100 mile rides to get him used to the distance. He completed the race in 14 HOURS (2.5 mile ocean swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run), and he was followed by NBC's cameras the whole time, in addition to being interviewed in depth prior to the race. I give this guy MAJOR props...if you are into inspirational stories, you've got to check it out!

As a postscript, many of you know that I'm kind of an athletic nutbag (the only guy in Bob Z's 1000 Island crew that got up and ran after the 16 hour drive and night of drinking), and Brian and I are currently training for a 50-mile cross country running race in May. Anybody wanna join us?

Wally

iTrader: (1)

Wow...the swimming part i could do no prob as i was on swim team all through highschool and still swim to this day almost weekly just to stay somewhat fit....but running and biking would kill me!! Hell just biking around the lakeshore gets me all out of whack on the weekends!!

Hey Mike is there any way of looking up past athelets of the ironman?? My highschool swim coach was apparently in the ironman a few years after i graduated.....he was also one of you "athletic nutbags"!

sommerfliesby

Try the Ironman Live website...don't know if it has archives, but it has tons of info. I was able to track Brian thru the entire race online...see his splits and everything...plus I had his splits text messaged to my phone! With the time diff., he finished at about 2 in the morning our time, but I heard my phone chime, so I knew he'd done it!

Wally

iTrader: (1)

wow thats soo cool to see a friend in something as huge as that!! Congrats to him

MarkSmith

I see you friend Brian is in shape but I did not know he was that athletic. I thought he only liked to work on motors.

10x

I'd like to do the bike thing, but I sold my Kawasaki Z1R some years back.

sommerfliesby

Uhhh...I think Mark and Frank have been hitting the egg nog early..

Although, Brian Miller will tell you that most people he meets commonly mistake him for an Ironman triathlete...happens all the time.

Downtown42

What brand carton of cigarettes did you want for Christmas? I forgot.

Wally

iTrader: (1)

I'd have to side with Frank on the bike thing...if i still had my ZX-7r i could be a chase bike for ya mike

sommerfliesby

I've got over 10 grand in PEDAL bikes sittin' in the garage and in the basement...and my wife won't let me get a freakin' motorcycle for under 5K! She's worried I'm gonna get hit by a car...I told her what about all the time I spend pedalling along the side of the road? I've got plenty of stories about near misses...let me tell ya.

Dave....just send beer.