Kona. The word is sacred in the triathlon community. It’s uttered with a mix of reverence, wonder, excitement, and longing.

For endurance athletes the IRONMAN World Championship race in Kona is the Super Bowl, the World Series, The World Cup, all rolled into one. Some train their entire lives just to toe the line once. To get to Kona, most athletes have won their age group at IRONMAN triathlon somewhere around the world. Some people raise enormous sums of money for the IRONMAN Foundation. And there are a few people who are personally invited by IRONMAN to compete at Kona. In October of 2017, I was the latter.

The Ironman World Championship in Kona tested me more than anything since fighting in the streets of Fallujah, Iraq. It took everything I had to reach the finish line that day. But it was worth every second of pain.

Ironman invited me as an ambassador, which included speaking on a panel to talk about how I went from a veteran with PTSD and severe alcoholism to competing in long-distance triathlons. This was only my second full IRONMAN triathlon, which meant that saying I was inexperienced was an understatement. But as everyone knows, when you get invited to Kona, YOU GO TO KONA.
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