Triathlon World Championships Sept 2018 (Gold Coast)

Over 20 years ago I went into a deep dark bout of depression. I found peace and the ability to control this through my passion of surfing and being in the ocean, my local break was a stones throw away. Anxioety and depression just don't go away they follow you and once leaving home and moving around the country the ocean was never as accessiable as it once was.

So I needed something else to ease the burdens of life. In my quest to self medicate through being active 5 years ago I had a go at Triathlon. It felt amazing, having to combine and perfect all three diciplines into one race wasn't easy and still to this day having the perfect race is something I think every triathlete strives for. Being able to be in the outdoors, with nature gave me natural form of medication and soon feeling the stresses on my muscles became addictive, but my mind calm. Training became a way of life. Committing myself to waking up early, feeling grumpy come 4pm because of a 4 hour ride, injuries and more. I had some small sucesses and these grew into bigger goals. Sitting down with a good friend who had his own history of high level running and offering a plan to see how far we could take these goals again fed my thirst for wanting to accomplish something great.

Fast forward 5 years, 3x 70.3 ironmans and over a dozen standard and sprint distance races I decided to eye the goal of qualifying for Triathlon World Championships on the Gold Coast and representing my country in my age group. The qualifying race was 2018 Corsair Bay Nationals in Christchurch a hard and honest race, with all the knowledge I had gained from my coach, support from my wife and family I am happy to announce this goal was acheived. I am a Deputy Principal of a primary school in North Canterbury and share parts of my story with my students showing to them no matter the age people can acheive greatness and that greatness is what they decide it is.

Now it is all about being able to fundraise race entry fees, TriNZ race uniforms, race insurance, flights, hotels etc. Triathlon is a fast growing sport and having read an article this year about athelets that compete in World Championships at Kona for Ironman having the average salary over 100,000USD shows that this sport is soon going to become out of touch for many "average joes", which I find extremely sad. I welcome any donation to my cause. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and I hope to inspire you to get out there and strive for something that is important to you. Motion creates Emotion!