2025: the peak

2025 was the peak of our fitness, the best shape either of us has ever been in. That includes the military, when we were young. We had never been in better shape than we were in 2025.

Going into the year we still did a few races: the Bosetti Sunrise 10K on New Year's Day, the Kailua 10-Miler, the Windward Half, and the Hapalua. All of them were preparation for the Ironman in The Woodlands, Texas, on April 26.

Training for Texas

We never pushed extreme levels of training for this race. Pretty consistently we did about a full Ironman a week, and Strava has my average for the fifteen weeks before Texas at about 110 miles on the bike, 25 miles of running, and 2,800 meters of swimming. The longest single day in the whole six months was about five hours. There was a day in February where we rode about four hours out and back on Lagoon Drive and then ran an hour off the bike, and that was the biggest day of the build. So we really had no idea what 12, 13, or 15 hours of straight activity was going to do to our bodies. Nobody does the first time.

Texas

We went out a week early. We flew into Austin on the Sunday, drove down to The Woodlands on Monday, and spent the week getting the lay of the land: the run course, the bike course, where the swim went in. And we spent it getting used to the humidity. Honolulu is warm and humid, but January through March is our cooler time of year, and Houston in late April was hotter and a lot more humid than we were used to. We were apprehensive, a little anxious, and very excited to see what we could do.

Race day was perfect, sunny and beautiful, and then we got in the water and it was a 2.4-mile mosh pit from start to finish. The swim is in a man-made lake, not very deep, dirty, mucky fresh water, nothing like the ocean at home. We both had wetsuits on, which gave us some buoyancy back in the fresh water. We both came out in about an hour and a half, and Michelle beat me out of the water by a minute, 1:30:13 to my 1:31:16. She is very proud to tell people that she beat me out of the water at an Ironman, and she is not wrong.

Coming out of the water there are wetsuit strippers standing by who rip the suit right off you, which helps a lot. Then it's into the tent, into the bike gear, and out for 112 miles: residential streets through The Woodlands out to the Hardy Toll Road, which is closed for the event, a couple of 20-mile loops on the toll road for about 80 miles, and back into The Woodlands. I came in at 5:50 on the bike and Michelle at 6:44, and she rode really well. The bike was great for me. I held a nice pace the whole way, stopped at a couple of aid stations to refill water and eat a couple of bananas, and at special needs, around mile 65, I had pure maple syrup waiting for me. It went down easy and gave me the energy to keep pushing. That was a game changer.

Getting off the bike, my feet hurt terribly. I have fairly high arches and I hadn't discovered insoles yet, so I'd ridden six hours on the flat insoles that came in the bike shoes. Putting running shoes on felt great, and so did being off that medieval torture device. But it's a marathon you're staring down. The Woodlands run is three loops of a little over eight miles, and the course was spectacular, with spectators along most of it. There's a spot called Hippie Hollow where a group of people in sixties costumes bang on drums and make you feel special every time you come through. I walked each aid station and ran between them, about a mile apart, a gel at one and orange slices at the next, water over my head at every one. The nice thing about an Ironman is that by the time you're running it's late afternoon and starting to cool off. I had to stop for a bathroom break at mile 19, or I might have broken four hours on the run. I came in at 4:07 for the marathon and 11:52:41 overall.

I can't describe the feeling of crossing that finish line. It was one of the most rewarding feelings of accomplishment I'd ever had in my life, and it made the whole day worth it. After some food, some drinks, and a short massage, I went back out on the course to cheer Michelle in. She finished in 14:37:09, about two and a half hours behind me. She hadn't listened to her body enough on the bike, and by the time she got to the run she was having a hard time. She pushed through it, completed her first Ironman, and it was awesome.

Now what

Once we got home and the good feelings wore off, we were both a little depressed. It was the same feeling as after the first marathon: now what? We'd had this huge, scary thing on the calendar for six months, and now it was done and we were back home. So we signed up for the Honolulu Triathlon, three weeks after the Ironman, and the Hawaii 70.3, five weeks after it, neither of which we'd signed up for until then.

Coming off the Ironman in the best shape of our lives, we went out and crushed both. Michelle won her age group at the Honolulu Triathlon and I was second in mine. At Honu the swim was the full 1.2 miles this time, and both of us ran faster off the bike than we had in 2024. Then we said, let's do something even crazier, and signed up for the Oahu Pentathlon the first weekend of August with a couple of our friends.

The Pentathlon, and a lap of the island

The Pentathlon is a race around the island of Oahu in five disciplines, and the way it went, by my count, was a 2.2-mile swim, a 16-mile run, a 12-mile canoe paddle, a 30-mile bike, a 10-mile sandbag carry around Kaena Point at the northwest tip of the island, and then another 95 miles on the bike from Waianae around the south shore to Hawaii Kai and up to Kailua. The sandbag is 45 pounds. I walked that leg with our CrossFit friend Jake. It was one hell of an experience and a great event for all of us.

Two weeks later was the Dick Evans. This time Michelle signed up two nights before the race and decided she was going to ride around the island with us. I loved the neutral portion out to Kunia Road again, and this time I almost made it to the top of the hill before the real cyclists dropped me. It was still a soul-crushing ride around the island. That ride does not get any easier. And being on a road bike by yourself is not the same as being on a tri bike. Solo on a road bike it's tough to make headway, especially in wind, and a tri bike puts you in a much more aero position that's a lot easier to ride alone. My third lap was 5:55:53, my first under six hours. Michelle's first was 7:57:33, alone on a road bike for most of it.

The Waikiki Roughwater was the weekend after that, and it was a good one, calm water and a little current helping us along.

Augusta, a year late

The BioAstin marathon series didn't really happen in 2025. The group that had run it for all those years stepped back and a new group came in, and it wasn't the same, so we did a couple of sporadic events that fall instead. Then came Augusta, the race Helene had taken from us the year before. Still in great shape, we went out and crushed that one too. This time we didn't spend a couple of weeks on the East Coast. We flew out for the race. It was a fun race: a quick swim in the river, a spectacular bike on rolling hills through Georgia, and a shaded run, as advertised, even though Augusta in late September is still hot. My parents got to watch that one and cheer us on.

We raced it with our friend Ed, who'd done a couple of Hawaii 70.3s with us. Michelle passed him on the run and beat him by about ten minutes. He gave everything he had to keep up, but he has a demanding job and doesn't get to train the way we do, and he had to yield to Michelle's fitness.

California, on three weeks' notice

Right after Augusta we found out that Michael, Jake, and our friend Tony were doing IRONMAN California the third week of October. We thought, why don't we go out there, surprise them, and do it with them? At that point we thought we were completely invincible and could sign up for an Ironman three weeks out and go do it. So we did. We flew to Sacramento, surprised our friends, and completed another Ironman.

California was a lot different. It's a river swim, and it is ice cold, especially where you go from the American River into the Sacramento River. The temperature drop is instant, something like 64 degrees to 56. I had a sweatshirt waiting in transition, and thank God I did, because the cold stayed with us through the first half of the bike. The bike is completely flat, through the back country outside Sacramento, some vineyards, a nice course but five and a half hours of not a lot to look at. The run had some gravel and some uneven ground, but it wasn't a bad course, and I felt good on it. I was putting in a pace where I thought I might break four hours for the marathon. At mile 24 I looked at my watch and saw I had about 16 minutes to make it, and I'd been running nine-minute miles at best, so I knew I had to book it. Strava has my last two full miles at 8:35 and 7:53, and the last third of a mile at 7:28. I came in at 3:59:24 for the marathon and 11:16:13 overall. Two years after missing four hours in a standalone marathon by 35 seconds, I broke it after a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike. I was ecstatic.

Michelle did not have the same run. Her hip started giving her trouble, she did a lot of walking, and she still finished the Ironman, 15:26:59, which is an awesome accomplishment. She's been dealing with that hip, and her back, ever since. We're still working through it.

The marathon, together, and a 50K

That hip is why the 2025 Honolulu Marathon was quite a bit slower. I ran it with her, and we walked a lot of it. 5:25:08 for both of us, six weeks after California.

A week later I did the Hawaii Kai Ultra, a 50K on a three-mile loop up and down Kalama Valley. It was a brutal run. Right after it I got sick, felt like crap, and it took everything out of me.

That was the year. Two full Ironmans, two half Ironmans, an Olympic, the Pentathlon, a lap of the island, the Roughwater, and the marathon, plus the Ultra. Strava has me at 4,710 miles on the bike and 1,208 miles of running for the year. I don't know if we could ever replicate it, because of the amount of training it takes to get to that level. It was an incredible year, and it ended with eggnog, celebrating, and looking forward to a much calmer 2026.