Getting the News! Kona, Here I Come!!

I will use this as a starting point in my journey to Kona to race in the World Triathlon Championship. Unbelievable.

It really started when I got a phone call from a guy named Steve in NY (I should have known something was up) saying he was working with Fox News and that he had identified me as someone who they wanted to interview. I was immediately suspicious of this but I never put it together with a lottery entry to the Ironman that I had put in several months ago and had forgotten about. After a couple conversations, I was connected to Bruce Snyder, the sports director for our local television station (great guy and loves practical jokes), Fox 18 sports, here in Charlotte.

So in short, they had me come down to the studio under the premise of being interviewed on triathlons. Nothing was ever said or let on to about ironman races or the lottery tickets.

Once in the studio we started the interview. It was going quite well and as we got to the end of it, Bruce started asking me about Ironman races and if I would ever think about doing them and in passing I said yes but I was a little too busy to do it at this point in my life.

That’s when he pulled out the Lottery board and said well you better start training because you have won a slot in the 2008 World Championships in Kona Hawaii. WOW!! What a shock. The first thing I thought about was the training load that I was going to go through this summer. It’s going to be a busy summer!

Scheduling, that was going to be the real challenge with everything I have going on from work to my involvement at my college I graduated from, ASU to coaching football in the summer and fall. How do I stuff all of this in????? I figure this is a once in a life time opportunity and I need to grab onto it. I’m not getting any younger and training is going very well right now, so this is the year to do this.