I Trained for Ironman Alone. I’m Climbing to 14,000 Feet With a Group of Men.

Ironman is a solo sport. Twenty hours a week, most of it alone, building toward a race that comes down to you and whatever you put in before dawn for the better part of a year. I did that for years. All World ranking. All American. I was good at it.

What I did not understand then is that I was also using it to be alone.

This summer a handful of us are heading into the Eastern Sierras. The Palisade range. Six days in. We summit Mount Sill on day three. 14,160 feet. Thirty pound packs. It is not a casual trip.

Training looks familiar on the outside. Six days a week in the gym, push-pull-legs, push-pull-legs, same as I have done for six years. I swapped leg day for a ruck. Thirty pounds, four to five miles on weekdays, ten miles up Mount Tamalpais on weekends. My body knows how to do hard things. This is a different hard thing.

The difference is not the elevation.

Gary invited me into the Wineland community a while back. Every time Gary has opened a door it has been a fuck yes. The Wineland community. This trip. The 6am breathwork group on Monday mornings, a handful of men starting the week together with holotropic breathing. No deliberation. Just yes.

These are men who are doing real work on themselves. Not performing it. Doing it. I have great friends who have shown up for me through genuinely hard seasons. What I was looking for here was something adjacent but different. Depth. People pointed in the same direction who want to go further together than any of us would go alone.

Ironman taught me what I am capable of alone. I am going to the Palisades to find out what I am capable of with people I trust.

The mountain is in August. I will bring the map.

What are you training for right now that you cannot finish alone?