If you had told me a few years ago that I would become an ironman I would have laughed at you. I was a rugby player first and foremost and everything else was just sport other people did. Well was I in for a surprise two years after I had hung up the boots. I started training to uphold my fitness and just to look the way you would expect a trainer to look. I was weighing in at a light 94 kg at this stage and having to do a lot of weight training to maintain this form and having no goal began to take its toll. Something was missing; I needed a goal. And so started my time on the bike, first just commuting and eventually I bought my first second-hand racer. I thought this boy was the best bike in the world until I set foot in Richmond Park, London’s cycling Mecca – this is a story for another day!

Well long story short, I cycled past a bunch of guys in Richmond Park training for an Ironman. Throughout all my years of playing Ball I always said once I’m done with this I’ll go do something completely different and I realised then how much I needed a goal. All this training for nothing just didn’t work for me anymore, and, of course, who doesn’t want to train in lycra?! At the end of 2009 I bought a book called ‘24 ‘Weeks to Finishing an Ironman’. Well, it first taught me that ignorance is bliss, and so started my story of becoming an Ironman. I obviously had a few doubters, but to me that is fuel, the more opposition the better, and of course I had many people that thought I could give this thing a go.

First I had to drop weight in order to actually get my body over the distance in 8 months. I started with a change in diet from what I was use to; I’m not going to go into all that today or this week all I’ll say though is it was very stupid and even though I lost 18 kg in the space of 8 months it wasn’t pretty!

So what is this blog? Well it’s not a training schedule or a blog with fitness tips, it’s a 6-and-a-half-month journey with me. I’ll tell you about the highs and lows of training 13 – 20 hours a week and I’ll tell you about the motivations each week holds. Louisa and I will be doing most of this together so I’ll even be throwing in some marriage tips and let you know how that works out for us!!

Most of all I would like to look back on this blog and see what motivated me to keep going each week. I think every week is different when you put in so much training; at the moment it all about changing our bodies again and we are seeing some results already. The fitness is getting better, the fat is coming off especially over the festive time and already we are trying to push ourselves beyond what is expected from the programme.

I would say inspiration and motivation are two different things. What inspires me to keep going is a form of thanks giving to God for giving me this body to enjoy and push beyond what I thought possible. This year it’s a sub-10 hour ironman. Motivation is what triggers you to wake up at 05:00am on a Sunday morning, put on your wetsuit at 05:30am in March and get into the serpentine while most of the world is still sleeping. So what is that trigger? Well, just that no one else is doing it!!!

If it doesn’t cost you anything it’s worth absolutely nothing!!

With that I’ll say have an amazing week.

Until next week, much love God Bless

Ad Foster