What's important to you?

What’s important to you?

What matters?

Family?

Friends?

Money?

Nice things?

A job title?

Status?

Experiences?

What is it?

Ask yourself.

Really ask yourself.

Sit down and figure it out.

What are you optimizing your life for?

What’s most important?

The older I get, the more I realize.

All the material things don’t matter.

Money?

Sure it’s important.

But only to a certain extent.

Money accentuates who you are.

If you’re happy, more money will make you happier.

But if you’re miserable, money will just exacerbate your problems.

Also, money disappears.

You can’t take it with you when you die.

The Egyptians tried that.

It didn’t work.

All the things you work for will eventually disappear.

To me, the only important thing in life is time.

How you spend it.

Who you spend it with.

What you spend it doing.

Those are the most important questions.

I had an eventful week.

After my 3.5 hr run on Sunday, had a 30 minute open water swim Monday.

Then packed my bags and headed to Jordan for a friend’s wedding.

One of my best friends from my time at med school in Scotland.

Left Tuesday.

Got there 8 am Wednesday morning.

Headed to a farmhouse to meet all my uni friends.

Chilled all day.

Had a wedding event that evening.

Thursday was a chill day with an incredible dinner at this Armenian Lebanese restaurant.

Friday was the wedding.

Flew back to Toronto Saturday.

Landed Sunday morning after 20 hours of travel time and went straight to another wedding.

Where I had to do a dance that I had learned the night before.

Thankfully, everything worked out.

It was a hectic week.

2 weddings in 2 continents over a weekend.

Lots going on.

But man, was it fun.

Felt so lucky and grateful to share these special moments with friends and family I’ve known for decades.

Had a moment in Jordan after dancing for 3 straight hours where I told another friend

‘He (the groom) looks so happy.

Seeing all his family around him, smiling, laughing, having a good time.

Man is it beautiful.’

Those are the moments.

The ones that matter.

The ones that are most important.

Where you’re around the people you care about.

Having a good time.

Smiling.

Laughing.

Dancing.

Creating lifelong memories together.

That’s the point.

It’s why you work so hard.

Why you grind.

Why you suffer.

So that you can enjoy it with the people who mean the most.

I want to create more experiences like that.

Share my life with those who matter the most.

Achieve something, but also bring people along the way.

Life is boring when done alone.

Sure it can be fun in moments, but it’s way more fun doing it with people you love right there next to you.

That’s what this Ironman will be.

Have 30 people coming to Ottawa to cheer me on.

Lots of family and a few friends.

Sharing this memory with me.

Can’t wait.

This week reminded me of what’s important.

So remember to ask yourself.

What’s important to you?

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This week in training - (Follow me on Strava here):

Swimming - 1.1k. 1 Open water session before I went to Jordan. Cut it short as I was feeling tired from the day before. Open water is still tough, much different than the pool, but know I need to just take my time. Have a few more this week so should be getting more comfortable.

Biking - 0k - no biking this week as I was traveling.

Running - 16.4k - 2 runs on the treadmill at the hotel while I was away. First run was chill then did a 10k tempo run. Slowly getting faster for longer with the HR not being too high. Know this will help me on race day.

Notes from Week 28 of training:

• Taper week has started and glad it coincided with the Jordan trip and back-to-back weddings.
• Nutrition was not great this week with the traveling. Didn’t feel the need to keep up the diet/nutrition while away and glad I got a break from it for a few days. Man the food was so good in Jordan, especially the shawarma and falafels.
• Swimming was ok this week. Only one open water session that I cut short as I was tired. Still not happy with my speed in open water but know that doesn’t matter as much as rhythm and tempo. More sessions to come this week.
• No bike this week and glad I got a break.
• Decent run week. Glad I got a few sessions in on my trip. Did a 10k before the wedding night and didn’t realize how much Arabs dance at their weddings. Was on my feet for 5.5 hours straight and ended up waking up with a right calf strain. Don’t think it’s a huge issue, but will be monitoring it this week and tapering down the runs to make sure not to aggravate it. Who knew that a few weeks before my Ironman, when I’ve been reasonably healthy all year, I would get an overuse injury because of too much dancing. Such is life haha…
• Movies - watched Disturbia (good old school thriller), Heat (epic crime movie), This is where I leave you (good family drama), and Ocean’s Eleven (love a good heist movie). Finished the rest of the Tour De France show (not as good as previous seasons but still wild; those guys are INSANE) and started the Quarterbacks show.
• This week was not about training. It was about enjoying life. Was nervous about this week going back to last year as how I would be able to cope with a big break just a few weeks before my Ironman. However, I’m so happy with how everything worked out, even with this calf strain. Have a good 2 weeks left to taper down and it still doesn’t stop me from biking/swimming, so will do my best to enjoy the next few weeks. Hard to believe we’re less than 2 weeks away from the big day. Lots to do before then, including a ton of planning/logistics, but super excited that race day is finally here.

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