An introduction

This is my training journal for Ironman Portugal 2024. I started it on January 7th. It was my third month of training and I started to record some of the lessons I've learned. I knew that this will end on my website but I still wrote it as if it will never be seen as you will clearly see.

I wrote the subtitles recently, but the content of the blogs is mostly unedited. It's disjointed, over-dramatic at times, and some of it makes no fucking sense. That’s because I made it for me, in the heat of the moment. It makes perfect sense to me and I chose to leave it exactly as is. As such, it paints the picture that I want to paint: One of my messy quest to be understand the invisible walls that I keep bumping in to.

I’ve read the articles before I publish and I fixed a few issues, mostly relating to context or finishing incomplete thoughts. I did exclude a couple of posts to protect the innocent and what not. But otherwise, I didn’t take anything out. It’s all in. Some of it is embarrassing but some of it gives me great pride.

Most of all, I think it’s a successful project. I started writing because I needed to record my learnings. The lessons I learned became a part of me, but it helps to refresh them every now and then. I intend to do that. I intend to read this every once in a while. That’s the main reason for recording this.

I don’t know the best you could read this this. Start to finish? backwards? Cherry picking my ambiguous titles? I don’t know.

I think that reading blogs by some random dude on the internet is in many ways better than watching a vlog on Youtube. A Youtuber has an agenda, a story to tell, an image to paint, an arc to follow. They are limited by what they can document. Most importantly, they get to edit. Editing tells you more about the editor that it does about the story. Editing is to the truth what a river is to a canyon. In exposing its many layers, it turns it into something else, often more beautiful, but certainly not the original. I’m after the original and for that, there’s no substitute for a journal.

My blogs don’t share too much about events and imagery. They are more about the contemplations that took place in various moments. There are no tips, no technicalities and no structure. There’s no point. They answer two questions about this specific man at every step of the way: What was it like to do this, and what did I learn from it.

Perhaps one day I’ll give this story more justice and tell it in a way that helps people read it. But for now, all you get is random traces and it’s good enough for me.

I have no goal in publishing this. I just wanna be that guy that shares shit on the internet for no apparent reason.

If I my blogs can get one message across to whoever is reading this, it would say: “It’s not just you, man. Me too”.