Why – Part 3 of a 3 Part Series. Epic workouts & Core Races & Forever Pace edition.

The central idea behind this blog was always twofold.

First, the 18 Month Plan, aka the 1% Plan. Through a combination of stock & options trading, investing and dividend harvesting I generate $10,000 per month by December 31, 2026, ‘lifestyle’ money.

This number would reduce and eventually eliminate reliance on a W2.

I have primarily focused on this during the first two months of this blog.

There was a second purpose to this thing, my passion for endurance sports.

Not only do endurance sports play a critical importance in my life, there are numerous parallels between the 1% Plan and Endurance Sports:

• Goal-setting. In personal finance and in sports, setting a goal doesn’t just provide a destination, it provides motivation.
• Planning & Resource Allocation. A goal without a plan is just hope. Once the dopamine hit from setting that goal or signing up for that race wear off, it’s critical to build a plan to get you there.
• Discipline. Setting a goal is one thing, building the roadmap is another. Getting up and performing day in and day out, especially when you don’t want to or there is temptation to deviate from the plan is what leads to success.
• Grit. Injuries, bad trades, flat tires, market setbacks, you name it. There will always be minor setbacks and bumps along the way. The ability to persevere anyway, moving forward in the face of resistance, this is key.
• Perspective and attitude. Nassim Taleb in the eponymous “Antifragile“, describes his theory of antifragility as those things that don’t simply withstand a shock but actually improve because of it. I will talk here about a devastating bike crash at the Oceanside 70.3 this year that taught me a far greater lesson than any so-called success, and I have written extensively about the lessons learned from my mistakes and losses on the finance front. The only that changes – and the only thing I can control – is my attitude.
• Curiosity. When all is said and done, I’ve set my goal, made my plans, shown up day in and day out, dealt with loss and setback, maintained my long-term perspective, can I remain curious? Am I still as open-minded as I was when this all began.

Not an exhaustive list of parallels and life lessons, but a good start.

So here in this third installment of Why? I will explore my WHY behind endurance sports, epic workouts and crazy adventures.

A Great Big Shoulder Chip

I grew up small, feeling like I had something to prove. Most of the time this showed up in fairly benign ways, mostly around being the class clown. I played the sports you’re supposed to play – soccer and baseball, not being particularly good or bad at either. Just average.

Whatever I did, I did it exceptionally average and passionately apathetic.

I basically remember quitting lots of things.

Somewhere around 7th grade I realized I liked basketball. 4’8″ or not, I liked basketball so I started playing and that continued until the summer prior to my Freshman year of high school when I was playing basketball and football and started getting the most crippling headaches you can imagine. Imagine someone drilling a hole in the back of your head approximately an inch around and then hammering a baseball into your head approximately 4 inches around.

It hurt worse than that.

And just as I began to find my feet athletically, I was diagnosed with brain cancer and would spend the next 3 years learning to walk and write again.

So after the baseball was removed, I had a long road to recovery ahead, from 1987-1991. At my lowest I weighed around 90 pounds at 4’10”.

I threw up everyday for 3 straight years. That’s over 1000 consecutive times throwing up. That alone has to be some kind of record.

However a funny thing happened before my Senior Year – I stopped throwing up. One day, it just stopped.

I grew. I hit the weights. I got big and then bigger. I’ve said it before – I may not be the smartest or most talented but I will outwork anyone and I lived in the gym. I entered bench press contests and such and began winning. I felt like a normal person for once and I liked it. I wanted more.

I went out of the wrestling team ( I cannot for the life of me remember why I went out for the Wrestling team), made it, even won a few matches. I could win matches because I somehow became much stronger than most people. There was no technique involved, just strength. Lots of strength.

Feeling so good, so big and so strong I decided to parlay that success into a wrestling career at the University of Colorado. That wrestling career lasted exactly one day. Winning a few matches at my middling high school because I was an incredibly strong 98 pounds is 180 degrees different than going up against some of the best wrestlers from their respective high schools. I went to one practice, got absolutely demolished and decided that a fraternity and lots of beers sounded much more attractive than a bunch of dudes that smelled horrible and had cauliflower ear.

But hey, I wrestled in college. For one day.

Running Away (from my problems)

It wasn’t until later – much later – that I found my feet. In 2001, the Ravens beat the Giants in the Super Bowl. I remember this because I remember sports trivia much more than I remember my wife’s birthday. I also remember this because in a drunken stupor the night before, some friends asked me to run a 10k with them the next day, the Redondo Beach Super Bowl 10k. Mind you, I didn’t run at this point.

I woke up the next day.

Hold on, I came to the next day, met them at the start and ran.

Hold on, I came to the next day and threw up. Then I met them at the start and ran a little. I also walked a little. 10 is a lot of K’s, a lot more K’s than I was comfortable with. It was not much of a race for me. I remember 3 things – first, I remember going to Burger King afterwards and eating all the burgers. Second, I remember the Giants losing because my girlfriend at the time was a huge Giants fan, by which I mean her fanhood was huge, she wasn’t huge. Pretty petite actually. But she hates me very much now, so enough about her.

But the third and most important thing I remember was the feeling of accomplishment. I distinctly recall doing that thing you do where you weave the fact you ran a 10k into every conversation that no one asked you about. Like hey can I get you a beer? I’m pretty thirsty because I just ran a 10k. And I milked that for all it was worth, probably for a few days. The crazy thing was how little of that was my fragile ego and how much of it was a genuine sense of accomplishment. Running that 10k unlocked something in me and I wanted more. I have told the story elsewhere, but within 2 years of that 10k I was running marathons and within 5 I was racing Ironman.

And in 2007 I won both the 5k and the 10k at that same Redondo Beach Super Bowl race. And that is my fragile ego.

Epic Days and Epic-er Races

My favorite book of all time “The Rider” by Tim Krabbe, is short – 160 pages long – and it focuses on one topic – riding bicycles.

I cannot think of a book that has more quotable lines or illustrates how I feel about epic workouts and races like this little book.

1. “Hot and overcast. I take my gear out of the car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafés. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.”
2. “Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you.’ Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately.”
3. “My muscles were able to fit themselves to my bike, they actually liked it: muscles are tractable and learn tricks fast. But racing downhill is a matter of nerves, and from the very start my nerves have thought: to hell with you and your bicycle racing.”

Or my favorite of all time:

“On a bike your consciousness is small. The harder you work, the smaller it gets. Every thought that arises is immediately and utterly true, every unexpected event is something you’d known all along but had only forgotten for a moment. A pounding riff from a song, a bit of long division that starts over and over, a magnified anger at someone, is enough to fill your thoughts.”

Tim Krabbe, The Rider

A bit of long division that starts over and over, he says.

And I thought I was the only one…

So like Krabbe, I became entranced by the epic training days, the suffering. The races were the icing on the cake but those epic days, those baked the cake.

There are too many epic training days to recount, but so many core memories. Common themes around the epic days – they usually take all day and they often involve being very far from home. A few:

1. Riding from LA to San Diego and taking the train back.
2. Riding from LA to San Diego and not taking the train back.
3. Riding from San Diego to Palm Desert, almost dying, staying in a hotel in Warner Springs for the night.
4. Riding from San Diego to Palm Desert without stopping.
5. So many Palm Desert training weekends.
6. Epic training weeks in St. George, Las Vegas, Palm Desert.
7. Spending a year flying in and out of Las Vegas instead of LA so I could train in St George leading up to the last full Ironman they held there.
8. 20 mile runs through Peachtree Park when working in Atlanta, in Charlotte, in Virginia Beach, in Sacramento.
9. Thanksgiving Day run in Omaha when my hair froze.
10. Group ride (fully supported) from Santa Cruz to San Diego

And the races.

1. LA Marathon 2012. Breaking 3 hours after 11 tries.
2. LA Marathon, the other 7 times
3. Ironman Arizona
4. The infamous Belgian Waffle Ride. So many bloody parts, so much suffering over 130 miles and 13,000 feet of climbing. The best.
5. Running the Boston Marathon and taking slugs of beer along the way during my last few weeks of drinking – ever.
6. Racing 3 National Championship races in 3 days in Milwaukee.
7. St. George 70.3 2024. Not my fastest time ever but slayed dragons out there.
8. Oceanside 70.3 2025. Crashing coming out of T1. Riding 56 and running 13 with devastating injuries. Letting go of expectations and loving the day.
9. Oceanside 70.3, the other 4 times.
10. 70.3 World Championships. Enough has been said already.

Chasing Forever

There is a concept generally held in endurance sports – forever pace.

I am reducing here, but if I fed and watered you enough, there is a pace that you could hold ‘forever’, say 12-18 hours. I mean, that’s an Ironman finish time so there is something to it. Too many times we want to go fast – as fast as possible. In long-distance sport, it isn’t about fast for short but moderate for long.

This applies to any given training day or race, but it also extends to a life.

The irony of aging is the inverse proportionate relationship between athletic performance and peace. I will never be as fast as I once was, but I also like myself more.

So my goal now is not to find my fastest pace, it’s to find my forever pace. How fast can I go when I am 70 and what do I need to do to get there?

Simply put what steps do I take now to ensure I am at the start line – AND THE FINISH LINE – when I am 70? How do I make sure people don’t just tell me I am fit for a 70 year old, but instead just tell me I am fit?

Ironically, by going slower.

First, it’s always easier to stay in shape than to get into shape. Getting older, unfortunately comes with its own soup of injuries and ailments. So the most important step is staying in shape.

What used to be swim, bike, run and eat literally anything I want, whenever I want is now;

Swim, bike, run, yoga, strength, stretch, massage, doctor’s appointments and a very regimented diet. My diet is centered around a healthy mix of vegetables, water, common sense and moderation. Eat vegetables at all 3 meals if possible, drink 5 or 6 big water bottles per day, keep carbs low, protein high, sugar is the enemy and pizza in moderation.

The point is that it is a lot harder to keep the machine running at 50 years old than it was at 20 or even 30. Whereas I used to roll out of bed and run 10 miles or ride 2 hours, there are now like 16 steps in my morning process just to get me to even. And that’s at 50 – wait until 70!

But as I said earlier, this is also countered by the sense of calm and peace I have about the whole thing now. Yes, I would love to compete, no I am not totally satisfied with just registering and finishing, but man it beats the alternative of not doing it all. Of giving up and getting fat. Of writing blogposts about the good old days, not the good new days.

See the problem with the good old days is you never know you’re in them until they are over.

So make them all good old days.

2026: Another Big Year

Along those lines, what is on tap for 2026?

First of all, I would like to qualify for USA Triathlon Nationals again. Qualifying requires finishing in the top 2 in my Age Group or top 15%, whichever is greater. Realistically this means top 1-5 for me. I qualified in 2022 & 2023 and raced in 2023.

Championships are humbling and awesome, simultaneously. Awesome because you are out on the course with some of the best athletes in the country. It’s gratifying to rack your bike and listen to people that are as crazy – or crazier – about this thing than me.

Humbling because you go from top 1-5 in your Age Group to 50th out of 65. Back to my point earlier, though, who cares? It’s cool to be there – and to buy a bunch of cool sweatshirts.

There are a couple of Olympic distance races I am looking at for early 2026 where I have a reasonable shot at it. Oly’s are fun because they are short enough to sprint but long enough to weed out those who aren’t fit.

Also on my list is another 70.3, probably in the Fall. My last 70.3 in Oceanside involved racing 80% of it covered in blood after spending 30 minutes getting my bike and elbow stables enough to just go on. There is some unfinished business there.

But the holy grail for 2026, the BHAG

– swimming to Catalina. I recently got connected to a guy who not only has swam to Catalina solo but who organized teams who relay the 20 mile journey. I am guessing it’s a 5 person team, 2 miles each twice, but more to come.

But epic s*&^t does not need to be an expensive, organized race. It can be something as insane as 5 people swimming 20 miles – much of it in the dark Pacific – for no other reason than it’s there.