Thank you! I couldn’t have done it without you. It got pretty dark by the back end of the run, both actually and metaphorically. The cloud obscuring the full moon plunged all of us stragglers heading down to the Energy Lab into near blackness—lack of street lights and a pot-holed road don’t make a great running combination.

There are no spectators on this part of the Ironman course, just an occasional athlete appearing out of the gloom on their return leg from the turnaround, a glow stick around their neck dimly lighting their way.

I passed a sign stating that competitors continued at their own risk—as if someone would read that and decide to not proceed.

Why was I putting myself through this again?

It’s Kona, the Ironman World Championship, I kept reminding myself. A once a lifetime opportunity (for me, at least). I can’t not finish!

I swear the only flat section in Kona is the swim. When you combine the never-ending rolling hills, a climb up the side of a volcano, with temperatures touching ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit (37°C), eighty-plus percent humidity, and a relentless wind that always feels like it’s in your face, it makes for a relentless grind. A fifteen-plus hour relentless grind, in my case.

As I resorted to power-walking the last thirteen miles of the run—the hill on the Queen K highway that just kept going and going, runners snaking into the distance, finally got the better of me—I knew I was in for a slog.

The course at Kona is distinctive in that the swim and bike are an out and back; usually, the swim at an Ironman would be two or even three loops (likewise for the bike).

Seeing buoys stretching for one point two miles into the distance brought home how long a swim it is. Driving our rental car to the bike turnaround at Hawi took well over an hour. For the first time, one hundred and twelve miles was starting to feel a long way.

But the run course, well, that’s a labyrinthian route. It heads off in one direction through the town, to a turnaround, then back towards Kona, a climb up to the Queen K, and then along the highway to a turnaround that loops back along the Queen K before dropping down to the Energy Lab and another u-turn that brings you back up to the Queen K and the last leg back to town for the finish.

Driving and riding parts of the run course had failed to bring home the near-constant rolling hills and climbs I now faced.

My usually good spirits had gone the way of the dodo. As night descended, it became a battle of sheer willpower to put one foot in front of the other. Yet, I couldn’t let all of you down, everyone that has supported me over these last three years. All of you that were following my progress live through the tracker app. Justin, who had flown to Kona to volunteer as my handler. Kerry, who was patiently waiting at the finish line.

It’s in these moments that we’ll do more for others than we’d do for ourselves. If it’d just been me racing out there, I’d have packed it in at mile twelve on the run, sat down on the side of the road, and called it a day. But it wasn’t just me racing out there; all of you were with me in spirit. I couldn’t let myself down; I couldn’t let you down.

So, when I finally heard those immortal words, “Keiron McCammon, you are an Ironman,” from the voice of Ironman, Mike Riley (who retired last year), I knew it wasn’t just me who was an Ironman. You, too, are an Ironman.

It’s been a decade-long dream come true, and thanks to all of you, I raised $140,600 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. That’s $1,000 for every mile of the race!

Thank you, I couldn’t have done it without you.

When I signed up to compete at the Ironman World Championship in 2020, I had no idea of the journey I was embarking upon.

Getting to the start line of a 140.6-mile Ironman is no walk in the park at the best of times, throw in canceled races two years in a row thanks to COVID, a broken clavicle, and then an eleventh-hour hurricane hitting us mere days before Kerry and I were due to fly to Kona, and I can honestly say it has been as much an ordeal of mental resilience as it has been of physical endurance…and I haven’t even completed the race yet!

As I sit here at thirty thousand feet en route to Hawaii (after rescheduling canceled flights), I can start to put the three years of training, broken bones, and a frantic post-hurricane cleanup behind me.

At one point on Wednesday, as surge water surrounded our house and flooded our garage, it looked like my Kona dream had been thwarted again. With no power, internet, or cell reception, figuring out if our flights from Fort Myers had been canceled (they were) was the last thing on our minds.

Training for an Ironman is partly about developing the physical stamina to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and then run a 26.2-mile marathon. It’s not something most of us can roll out of bed and do. Yet, as I look back over the last three years, I realize it’s more about developing the mental stamina needed.

I have lost count of the days I didn’t want to get out of bed at 5:30 am to swim, bike, or run, that little voice whispering to stay snuggled up instead. Yet, except on the rare occasion, up I got.

With each passing year and no race, the voice grew louder and louder. Reminding me of what was coming at the peak of my training. The five or six-hour bike on a Saturday, followed by a short transition run. The four-thousand-yard swim, followed by a sixteen or eighteen-mile run on a Sunday.

It kept whispering to coast on my ride instead of pushing to hit my power target. Why not walk for a bit longer, give yourself a rest, it would say, a seductive siren call to tired legs.

At times it was a cacophony, shouting, I’m done! It’s too hot (one hundred degrees Fahrenheit really is), this hill is too steep (they are around Lake Tahoe), and you can’t possibly run another step or swim another stroke. And yet I put one foot in front of the other, pulled another stroke, and turned the crank one more time.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two…and on and on. Repeating my counting incantation to focus or perhaps distract my mind.

All in preparation for Thursday 6th October 2022 in Kona, Hawaii.

Sometimes it was holding my dream tight that kept me going. Other times, it was the perceived expectation of friends and family, to who I had publicly declared my intentions, and many of whom have donated on my behalf in support and encouragement. And, at times, it came down to sheer grit and determination to get the job done.

I’ll need all of the above on race day. I’ve done everything possible, and now I surrender to what will come on the day. The waves, the wind, the heat, and the humidity, bring it on, I say. Bring. It. On.

Despite the twists and turns, I remain eternally grateful. I am grateful I get to train for and compete at the Ironman World Championship, it is a privilege. Grateful for the patience of my ever-supportive wife, Kerry. Grateful to Eric and Gigi for stepping in last minute to look after Jake after Hurricane Ian wrecked our dog sitter plans (we’ll be dropping Jake off in San Francisco before we connect to Kona). Grateful to all of you that have supported me and cheered me on from the sidelines.

I set out to raise $1000 for each of the 140.6 miles that I’ll be racing to support the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). As a challenged athlete, I know firsthand the difference participating in a sport and being physically active can make in one’s life. CAF provides grants annually to athletes of all ages, all disabilities, and across all sports, for the adaptive equipment or support they need to get out there and participate. It changes people’s lives; Kerry and I have been blessed to witness that up close and personal.

So far, I’ve raised an astounding $114,056!

Kerry and I have been matching your donations dollar for dollar and will continue to do so. Every dollar you give will have double the impact. If your company offers matching funds for your donation, it’ll quadruple the impact.

Whether I reach $140,600 or not, I’m overwhelmed by your generosity and patience as I keep pestering you for yet another donation. Your unquestioning support has been part of what has motivated me to keep pushing year after year in this seemingly neverending quest. Thank you with all my heart! Any final donations can be made online here.

I’ll be sure to post an after-race update, but for those who want to track me on the day, you can download an app: https://www.ironman.com/app-tracking-information.

P.S. I want to make a special callout to some long-time supporters and friends that have been most generous year after year in donating to CAF on my behalf. Ed, Graeme, Alex, and Lyndon, thank you.

Who knew that the road to Kona would be so rocky? Competing at the Ironman World Championship in Kona has been a dream since I completed my first full Ironman in 2010. So when Kerry bid on an entry for Kona at a charity auction back in 2019, it looked like I was well on my way to realizing that dream.

I opted to postpone my race to 2020 as Kerry and I already had committed travel plans for 2019 that precluded me from training for an Ironman distance event. But come October 2019, I dutifully kicked off my training preparation for the big day on October 10th, 2020.

Well, COVID-19 had other plans; the World Championships were first postponed and then canceled. However, undaunted, I continued training through 2020 (a good reason to be outside during the pandemic); as beneficial for my mental health as it was physically. And so 2020 came and went, and October 9th, 2021, beckoned.

That was until January 23rd this year.

A hard tumble on my snowboard combined with a hard-packed ski slope resulted in another broken shoulder. My left clavicle was already plated from a bike accident in 2009, yet somehow I managed to fracture it again, right at the tip of the plate. Fortunately, I could get back down the mountain to the ski patrol and from there to the local urgent care clinic at Beaver Creek to confirm the diagnosis. Day one of a week-long trip, and it was time for me to return home.

Kerry was none too impressed. Neither was my coach, given I likely wouldn’t be able to train for the next few months. Depending on my recovery time, my training window for Kona had just shrunk to less than six months.

On February 2nd, I celebrated my 50th birthday with an x-ray that confirmed that I hadn’t just fractured my clavicle. I’d torn ligaments in my shoulder from the impact and would need shoulder reconstruction surgery to patch everything back up.

My surgeon had a slot open the next day. So Kerry and I rushed from one clinic to the next getting an emergency COVID test and scheduling my surgery. Not quite how I’d envisaged ringing in the next decade of my life, though somewhat in character given the events of the past.

This pretty much scuppered my Kona aspirations for another year. Oops.

Yet, I remain undaunted. I’d always envisaged that the World Championship in Kona would be my fifth Ironman to celebrate five decades of life. And while I may not be able to race this October in Hawaii, it does give me the chance to complete my fourth Ironman at the end of November in Arizona instead—as they say, be careful what you wish for!

My shoulder is back to full fitness, and I’ve been able to resume my swim, bike, and run training regime. I have my sights set on the Ironman World Championship in Kona on Saturday, October 8th, 2022. Thank you to all that have supported me on this journey through your donations to the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). You’ve helped me exceed my initial goal to raise $50,000…thank you, thank you, thank you!

And since life has thrown down the gauntlet once again, and Kona is still another year or more away, I have decided to up the ante. My goal now is to raise $1,000 for every grueling mile of the Kona Ironman World Championship course; that’d be a grand total of $140,600!

We have $57,740 already in the bank, and Kerry and I will continue to match every donation dollar for dollar. If your company offers matching funds for your donation, we will also match that; potentially every dollar you donate could equate to $4 going to CAF to help a physically challenged athlete get the equipment and support they need to take part in sports…something most of us take for granted.

You can donate online here:
http://support.challengedathletes.org/goto/kona-2020

P.S. I want to make a special callout to my long-time supporter and friend Ed who has been most generous year after year donating to CAF on my behalf and helped me break the $50,000 barrier end of last year.

The world has certainly changed since my last update on March 11th. Who knew what was just around the corner?

Back then, my first race of the season, a Half Ironman in Florida, was five weeks away. I was deep into my training for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, scheduled for October 10th. Today.

That was over half a year ago and what feels like another world entirely.

As you can probably guess, my race in Florida did not happen. The World Championship in Kona was initially postponed until February next year and then canceled entirely. There is no World Championship today, like so many other things, a victim of the global pandemic.

Yet I’m reminded of when I was hospitalized in 2006, after having flown into power lines on my paraglider and been electrocuted.

After being medevac’d from Colombia to Miami, and once I was off the critical list and out of ICU, I was faced with an uncertain and indeterminate future thousands of miles from home.

Despite having just launched my first startup barely weeks prior, my life was now on hold as one surgery rolled into another, and the days came and went with no end in sight.

After the amputation of my left hand, I was left with a left arm that would not have been amiss if hung like a joint of meat in a butcher shop. It was so terrifying that I refused to look at it; whenever it came time to change my dressings, I turned my head aside.

What kept me going through my ordeal was the faith that this, too, shall pass. I had survived shorting across power lines and knew that whatever pain and emotional turmoil I then experienced would be but a dim and distant memory in the not too distant future. Of this, I was certain.

So for all of you that have struggled and continue to battle day-to-day as you navigate this pandemic, know that this too shall pass; nothing lasts forever, good or bad.

While I may not be racing in Kona today, I know my day will come, fingers crossed, this time next year. I chose to focus on what I can control, and ahead of me lies another twelve months of training and preparation…one swim, bike ride, and run after another.

I wish everyone continued good health through these trying times, my thoughts are with you…may you thrive throughout what is left of 2020 and beyond.

P.S. I do want to say a special thank you to a couple of dear friends, Lyndon and Graeme, who have been super generous in these uncertain times, helping me jump to over $46,000 raised so far for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. As you can imagine these are tough times for charities. Shout out to Sam, Fred, Alan, and Marvin as well, thank you for your support. I’m not far from my goal of $50,000, you can donate online here and remember Kerry and I are matching your donations dollar-for-dollar: http://support.challengedathletes.org/goto/kona-2020

P.S.S And while races were all canceled this year there was no holding back my best-of-friends Curt Cronin as we completed our own Half Ironman around Lake Tahoe in August (he only started his triathlon training this year). As you can see from the photo above, with the swim behind us we’re all smiles on our way up and over Emerald Bay.

When people find out that I’m training for an Ironman the conversation invariably steers towards the training that it takes to be able to complete a 140.6-mile race.

Now, while I’m not “mister speedy” out there, I thought I’d share a little of my preparation for the Ironman World Championship this October in Kona, Hawaii.

Things kicked off in October last year as I started to get back into training with my coach Paul Kinney (Kinney Multisport).

Paul has been my coach since I started doing triathlons in 2008. Having a coach is critical to me. The accountability keeps me honest, and I don’t have to think about my training, I just have to do it.

My overall training regime consists of swimming three times a week, biking three times a week, and running three times a week.

I also add in yoga three times a week as I find it helps keep me injury-free.

So that’s twelve workouts crammed into six days (Mondays are nominally a recovery day, though, I still do yoga), with longer distance workouts at the weekend.

The duration, distance, or intensity of each workout builds week-over-week for three weeks and then the fourth week is a recovery week with lighter intensity workouts.

This four-week cycle repeats month-after-month, ad-nauseam, until race day (twelve months for me this time, though typically it’d be more like nine months).

To make everything a little more concrete, here’s my training schedule from last week (my first race of the season is five weeks away, Ironman Florida 70.3, and I’ve just finished my penultimate four-week cycle before the race):

Over fourteen hours and nearly one hundred and twenty miles, and that’s for a Half Ironman.

As it gets closer to October most of the above times and distances will increase, (particularly the weekend workouts), as I build towards being ready for the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run in Kona. By then I’ll be training over twenty hours and covering closer to two hundred miles a week.

You may be thinking, “wow, there’s no way I could do that.”

That’s certainly what I said to myself when I first started doing triathlons and saw these “crazies” who were training for their first Ironman.

“Why would they want to do that?” I’d exclaim to anyone willing to listen.

And yet here I am…as with many things in life, it’s a gradual progression that starts with an incredulous first step.

Thank you to everyone who has donated to date to help me reach my goal of raising $50,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) by my 50th birthday next February.

I’m up to $17,524 already!

A big shout out to Alex, Julian, R2, Cynthia, Bob, Brian, Claire & Sean, Patricia, Stefan, Seph, Lynne, James, Jordan, Victor, Hershy, Christine, Kat, Chris, and Marla, thank you for your support.

Can you help? Kerry and I will match you dollar for dollar.

You can donate online here:
http://support.challengedathletes.org/goto/kona-2020

It has been a while since I last wrote. Maybe it’s age, but it’s astounding how easily a year or two can slip by, and believe me it’s been a busy couple of years.

When last I wrote it was June 2017 and I had completed my third Ironman at Lake Placid, putting in a personal best at age 46.

Fast forward a year to August 11th, 2018 and Kerry and I were renewing our vows, celebrating 18 years of marriage with friends & family in Kerry’s hometown in England. Her Dad finally getting to walk his only child down the aisle.

Then, come August 2019, we were both racing at Ironman 70.3 Boulder before heading off on a month-long Safari in Africa, traveling through Namibia and Botswana.

Now, it’s 2020 and the beginning of a new decade, and it has been a decade since I completed my first Ironman and set out to be a shining example of the power of the human mind, body, and spirit, inspiring others to overcome that which stops them from reaching their highest potential.

This year, thanks to my wonderful wife, I get to compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii – the birthplace of Ironman triathlon – fulfill a dream I’ve had since completing my first 140.6 mile Ironman in Cozumel.

To commemorate this grand challenge, and to give me the encouragement not to quit, I’d love to raise $50,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) by my 50th birthday a year from today.

Can you help me? To donate online, click here.

Kerry and I will match you dollar for dollar.

And should your company have a donation matching program, then we’ll also match their match…so every dollar you donate could equate to four times that going to CAF.

Why do I support CAF (aside from my personal connection as an upper limb amputee)?

• 21 million people live with a physical disability in the USA
• 50% of adults with a disability get no aerobic exercise
• Children with disabilities have a 38% higher obesity rate

Most insurance companies do not cover adaptive sports equipment, which many individuals with physical challenges simply cannot afford alone.

This is where CAF steps in and offers support through grants, camps & clinics, and mentorship to individuals with physical challenges who want to get involved in sports and be active.

Since CAF was founded in 1994, it has:

• Raised over $112,000,000
• Provided 26,000+ grants
• For 103 different sports
• In all 50 states across the US
• And in 70 countries worldwide
• Reaching an estimated 20,000,000 people with their message of hope and inspiration

On April 19th I’ll be competing at my first race of the season, Ironman 70.3 Florida and will be sure to post a race update!

When confronted by a blank page, “what am I going to write?” Is the foremost thought in my mind. What? What indeed.

In persistently asking “what” is it at all possible I’m grasping at the wrong end of the stick?

In Simon Sinek’s TED talk titled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, he expounds that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

And while buy in this context relates to marketing and sales, I believe the message has broader applicability. He explains how most businesses or brands focus on communicating their value based on what they do, as he says, “we make cars that are faster than anyone else,” or, “…are more fuel efficient…”, or, “…can fit more people.” He continues, explaining that some brands in an attempt to differentiate themselves, tell how they do it. Very few, though, are clear about why they do it. The purpose, cause or belief that underlies their existence. Those brands that do, however, are the brands with the cult-like followings; the raving fan customers that queue for days to purchase or experience the latest new thing.

Take Apple, a brand Sinek uses as an exemplar, imagine if Apple marketed like this:

“We make great computers, they are beautifully designed, simple to use and are user-friendly, want to buy one?”

Nothing unusual with this message, as he says, it’s the way most of us would communicate. It starts with what they do and works inwards.

Apple, though, does not market like this; instead, their message is:

“With everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo, in thinking differently, our products are beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly, we just happen to make great computers, want to buy one?”

What a difference starting with why makes. Sinek states that Apple “consistently thinks, acts and communicates from the inside out.” They start with why, and as consumers, we feel it. Just compare the brand appeal of Apple to someone like Dell, who also happens to make computers and other consumer electronics.

I believe, there is something akin to Sinek’s why when it comes to writing. On the outside is what we write: fiction or nonfiction; books or plays; poems or sonnets; essays or articles. The topics we enjoy, the stories we like to tell, the genres to which we gravitate.
Some may know who it is they are writing for: children; teenagers; or adults. Those in love, those not. Those who enjoy science fiction, those who read romance, those that enjoy thrillers or are in need of a laugh.

How many though, know why they write?

“Because it’s my job,” doesn’t count and doing it for fame and fortune is perhaps a little hopeful.

Why is hard. It’s fuzzy. What we do is so much simpler, more concrete, easier for us to verbalize. Digging deep into our psyche to uproot our seemingly unconscious motivations and desires is effortful. It doesn’t come naturally to most. But, what if, before putting pen to paper, instead of asking, “what am I going to write?” You ask instead, “why is it I write?” How different would that be?

What is it that drives you, that compels you? What sustains you as you sit staring at the blank page or pound away tirelessly to shape a paragraph, rewrite a sentence or change a word for the umpteenth time?

Are you writing to right a wrong, to set the record straight? To make a difference in the world—leave a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say? To share a story that is burning up inside of you. To educate, to entertain, to inspire, to shock, to elicit a smile or cause a tear to shed. To be the best damn writer, poet, playwright the world has ever seen.

“Enough already!”, I hear you scream, “it’s because it’s who I am.”

Now that’s a powerful statement. There is no more powerful a driver of human action than our beliefs about who we are. When your why becomes part of that, part of your identity, there is no challenge or obstacle, or blank page or recalcitrant phrase or awkward word that can stand in your way.

I’d posit that the Greats knew why they wrote. Shakespeare knew why he wrote. I couldn’t image the great bard explaining prosaically to someone that he’d just met in a pub in Elizabethan England:

“I mostly write plays, in them, I capture the essence of the human condition, want to see one?”

No, he would say:

“I am the chronicler of my time; I see the truth of what it is to be human, endlessly interesting and impossible to reduce to a simple formula, my plays capture the essence of the human condition, want to see one?”

Perhaps what makes great writing is not what is written, but why it was written. Is it not our passion, our drive, our purpose that brings life to the page, that seeps into every word we choose, the phrases we construct and paragraphs we write, grabbing the reader by the scruff of the neck and shouting, “read on, read on, I wrote this just for you!”

Writing is an arduous task, as the saying goes, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it; but if you have a powerful enough why anything is possible. It’s not what you write; it’s why you write that matters.

Much has been written about how important “team” is to the success of a startup and surely no team is more important than the founding team. If true, then why is it that so many entrepreneurs look to blind luck or happenstance as they go about building one? I know that I have been guilty of spending more time interviewing and vetting a potential employee than I did a co-founder.

I’ve been fortunate to be part of the founding teams for three startups in Silicon Valley, with my third landing me in New York (post-acquisition) three years ago. Since then I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many New York entrepreneurs embarking on their first entrepreneurial journeys. All of them, without fail, have an idea they are passionate about. Some may have already quit their day job to chase their dream. A few might have raised some seed funding to help finance it. What I find most surprising though, is that rarely is there an established founding team. Invariably, I meet solo entrepreneurs looking to build a team. If this is you read on.

Thanks to Steve Blank and Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame, there is plenty to read on how to develop your business or product. But how should you approach developing a founding team? There is little doubt that going it alone stacks the odds against you. Based on a survey of 650 companies, the 2012 Startup Genome Report identified that “solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot” (the latter being of particular relevance given the report also identified that “startups that pivot once or twice raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all”).

The best time to start building a founding team is long before you quit your day job and a great way to start is with a Kitchen Cabinet. No, not that kind of cabinet. The term Kitchen Cabinet was coined in the 1800’s during Andrew Jackson’s presidency of the United States. It was used to describe a collection of unofficial advisers he consulted (to the chagrin of some) in parallel to the United States Cabinet. As you search for like-minded individuals that might have an interest in your idea, instead of asking them to quit their well-paying jobs at Google or Facebook to join you as a co-founder and work for no salary until you can (hopefully) raise some funding, instead pitch them your idea and see if they’d be willing to dedicate a few hours a week to kick the tires on it.

You’re looking for people with complementary skills or experience to your own. People with differing perspectives that can act as a sounding board and question your beliefs and assumptions, all in the name of honing your idea into a well-formulated business opportunity. To be clear, this isn’t someone you have to pay. A software development partner or consultant willing to build your product for cash and/or equity doesn’t qualify, they come with their own agenda. And you should be upfront with everyone that there is no guarantee that anything will come of their efforts. They aren’t committing to joining you should you start something and you aren’t committing that they would be part of it, even if you did. Of course, the whole point of the exercise is to be on the lookout for a potential co-founder or early hire, but that bridge could be six or nine months away. Your Kitchen Cabinet will force you to get your idea out of your head and subject it to the critical thinking of others while the risks are still low; after all, no one has given up their day job yet. And you’ll get a chance to work with people you may later wish to partner with (or not as the case may be).

I first got exposed to the concept of a Kitchen Cabinet in 2004 thanks to Manish Chandra, (currently Founder/CEO of Poshmark). He had an idea for a collaborative bookmarking site, yet as a first-time entrepreneur faced the challenge of how to build a founding team around it. Over a period of nine months or more he invited over a dozen individuals, people he’d worked with, friends, and friends of friends, to meet at his house on Saturday mornings to discuss, conceptualize and prototype what ultimately became Kaboodle (acquired by Hearst Corporation in 2007). I was one of those individuals who gave up their Saturday mornings to refine the idea and many months later took a leap of faith and gave up my day job to start Kaboodle with Manish and Chetan (another Kitchen Cabinet member). By then we’d all had a chance to work together vetting the idea, researching solutions and building prototypes. Manish got to observe who was committed, who contributed beyond a few hours at the weekend and who might fit culturally. And, there was an added bonus, since there’s nothing quite like a bit of co-creation to bind a founding team together. I’ve used the Kitchen Cabinet multiple times to good effect. My only regret is the one time I didn’t.

But, what if you aren’t able to find anyone to join your Kitchen Cabinet? Well, either your idea isn’t very compelling, or you aren’t very compelling I’m afraid. Either way, you should stop and reevaluate what you are doing. If you can’t even get a couple of people to give up a few hours a week to work on your idea what makes you think you could successfully attract investors, employees or customers later on?

And no-one is going to steal your idea. I hate to break the bad news, but ideas are two-a-penny. What matters is execution. Taking the acorn of an idea and growing it into an oak tree is indescribably hard and any thoughts you share today will evolve so much between now and your ultimate success, that the risk of someone stealing your idea and getting it right is comparatively low compared to the risk of keeping it to yourself and going it alone. And, once you’ve incorporated, you can protect your company’s intellectual property by making anyone who contributed to its early development an advisor; in exchange for advisory shares, they assign all intellectual property over. A just reward for those in the Kitchen Cabinet that helped get the company started, yet, for whatever reason, wasn’t able to jump on board.

I share my Kitchen Cabinet story with entrepreneurs, usually, after they have told me how great their idea is and, with an expectant look, continue on to say that they just need to find a great CTO to join them as a co-founder. Sell me on your idea. Enlist me in your cause. Invite me to join your Kitchen Cabinet by all means. Just don’t ask me to be your co-founder the first time we meet. That’s like asking someone to marry you on a first date.

A year and one week ago I should have been completing my third Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid, New York. Alas, it was not meant to be, after months of hard training, a bike accident five weeks before race day ended with a broken collarbone and shattered dreams.

A year later, on July 23rd, 2017 the cold shrill of my iPhone alarm cuts into my restless dream that I’d overslept and missed the start of the race. It was time to take care of some unfinished business. As I lay on the ground last year after being run off the road by a white delivery van, feeling the break in my collarbone with my right hand and realizing my Ironman ambitions were done for, I had no shadow of a doubt that I’d be back to try again this year, to not do so was inconceivable. However, it’s been tough training at Ironman intensity for the second year in a row. There’s a reason for the three-year gap between my races to date. It takes a year for me to recover from the incessant training schedule, a year to forget the pain of the whole ordeal and a year to train for my next Ironman after the brilliant idea pops back into my head that I should do another one. I struggled the early part of this year with my motivation level; my usual iron will deserting me as I failed to build any training rhythm until April, at which point I was three months behind schedule. “Oh well,” I thought to myself, “no chance I’m going to be overtrained for this race.”

All through April, May, June and right up to race day the specter of last year’s accident clung to me like a homunculus. The slightest wobble on my bike or awkward step on a run flooded me with thoughts of falling and breaking or twisting something. Yet, here I am at 4 am race morning, undertrained for sure, but fighting fit and ready to swim 2.4 miles in Mirror Lake, bike 112 miles through the Adirondacks and run 26.2 miles out and back from Lake Placid. The oldest Ironman event in the U.S. outside of the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, Lake Placid is recognized as both a beautiful and daunting course with close to 7000 feet of climbing on the bike and over 1600 feet of climbing on the run.

Today though, the weather gods delivered a near perfect day, overcast and slightly cool. Quite a relief since earlier forecasts had called for rain and even thunderstorms. Waves of anticipation, or perhaps trepidation, churned my stomach as I stood on the shore of Mirror Lake surrounded by close to 2500 other wetsuit-clad Ironman wannabes of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Blocked by the mass of bodies lay the 1.2-mile swim course, the lake was an official 74 oF, quite balmy compared to the sub 60 oF temperatures of my last Ironman in Lake Tahoe. The ringing blast of a cannon marks 6:30 am and the start of the race for the pro field. Ten minutes later, a second blast signals the start for the rest of us. I cautiously, yet optimistically, have seeded myself towards the back of the wave of athletes hoping to finish their swim in under one and a half hours, a satisfying time for me given I only have the one hand. The mass of bodies ahead of me begins to jostle its way towards the swim start, I fit my goggles and sneak one last look at the line of yellow buoys marking the first leg of the course, thrashing swimmers already stretching away into the distance.

I have one goal in mind, to get on and stay on the underwater cable that extends the entire length of the course. About four feet under the surface this guideline will keep me swimming true instead of my usual zig zagging that I tend to do. Of course, I’m not the only one with this thought in mind, and so the battle begins to see who can claim the line as theirs. Triathlon swims are not for the faint-hearted, I’ve been kicked, grabbed, swam over and even had my shoulder dislocated in the melee of a swim start. A little argy-bargy secures my position just to the left of the line, and onwards I swim, head down. A thousand yards out a red buoy marks the first 90o turn and all the swimmers who have been swimming parallel with me now converge to make the turn. Like spawning fish in a shallow pool, we jostle into and over each other, pulling and pushing to make it past the constriction point. Keep calm. Keep breathing. A left hook catches me off guard and unseats my goggles, flooding my right side. No time to stop. Keep calm. Keep breathing. Keep swimming. Stop, and the hoard of swimmers behind me will bury me alive. Fifty yards and the second red buoy marks the next 90o turn and the straightaway back to the start. I focus on maintaining my position over the underwater cable, swimming into each of the eight yellow buoys marking the course and rounding the end of the pier to swim to the beach. Ahead and beside me, swimmers sway in unison as they emerge from the water on unsure legs and run the twenty sandy yards to enter the water again for the second loop. Glancing at my watch I spy my time is 42 minutes, if I can maintain this pace, it’ll be my fastest swim ever. I continue to count my strokes as I head back down the course, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3…and, so it goes on, looping over and over, distracting my mind from the exertion of the swim. The red turn buoy approaches again, and this time I make it past unscathed. Around the second red buoy and just the final straight to go. Wham! An errant fist unseats my goggles, and I have no choice but to pause and reseat them. Looking at my wrist, I see my time; I’ve slowed down compared to the first loop. “Come on, swim harder, nearly there.” My counting accelerates as my strokes increase from 36 to 38 per minute.

I stumble out of the water on to the beach and across the timing mat laid in the sand, 1 hour 29 minutes, only two minutes slower than my fastest swim and that was in Cozumel with a current. My water-logged and deadened ears come alive with the cheering and screaming of the spectators surrounding the beach and lining the chute to the transition area. Ahead, swimmers, in various states of disrobement, lay on the ground as volunteers tug and pull their wetsuits off. In no time I’m running along the beach with my wetsuit in hand or rather stump and weave around the athletes that are taking in the spectacle of it all. It’s 8:20 am.

Entering a sauna of a changing tent that is chock full of steaming bodies intensely focused on the job at hand, I grab the first empty chair I see close to the entrance and strip off my tri suit and dry myself with my trusty blue microfiber towel. No time to waste—the memory of my 24-minute transition in Lake Tahoe haunts me. Bike shorts on, bike jersey on, prosthetic arm on, helmet on, I’m ready to go. Stuffing my wetsuit and swim gear into my transition bag, I hand it to a volunteer and jog to the far end of the tent and into the fresh morning air, “maybe I should have put that base layer on after all,” but there’s no time for second thoughts now.

The bike racks, once chock full of bikes are now half empty. I’ve got some catching up to do despite a strong swim; only having the one hand will always put me at a disadvantage on the swim. A quick pit stop to relieve myself of the lake water unintentionally guzzled and I grab my bike to mount up for the 112-mile ride. Out of transition, a short downhill gives me a few moments to collect my thoughts after the bustle of transition. The words I read this morning from my coach, Paul, are foremost in my mind:

…you should be able to target 130-135 watts on the bike and still be able to have an effective run…[this] should feel very easy at the beginning of the bike and progressively feel harder as the 112 miles progresses, but never to the point that it feels unsustainable.

— Paul

Now my months of training kick in, and it’s all down to my nutrition, pace and discipline on the bike. Go too hard on the bike and my run will fall apart, just as I’d experienced with my first Ironman in Cozumel in 2010, I pushed hard, clocking a time of 6 hours 46 minutes, yet I cratered on the run, walking the last 8 miles. I have a trick up my sleeve, my new PowerTap P1 Pedals that allow me to monitor my power output through the ride, “the key is to pedal steady, with as few spikes as possible,” admonishes Paul in my mind. Not easy on a course with nearly 7000 feet of climbing and the climbing begins at mile three. If it weren’t for my power pedals I’d be pushing over 200 watts to keep up with the riders passing me. Instead, I hold back. “Just you wait,” I mutter as each rider passes me on the hill, “let’s see how chipper you feel on the second loop.” Discipline is telling me to ride my own race and not worry about anyone else; there’s still 100 miles of riding ahead and a marathon to boot. My ego rails against this cage with each passing rider. Cresting the hill at mile 10, I shift gears and climbing gives way to a 45 mph, sphincter tightening descent into the village of Keane. My rented 808 Zipp race wheels (with very wide rims) magnify each gust of wind, shaking my bike and pushing me towards the meridian as every muscle in my body braces nervously. At least I’m passing other riders as I tuck down on my aerobars to minimize wind resistance. The resonant “whoosh, whoosh” of my Zipp wheels and dull reverberating clunk of every gear change ring out. Even if they don’t make me go any faster, these wheels sure sound good.

At the bottom of the descent, I enter Keane and make a left hand turn onto the relatively flat 20-mile ride past Jay to the turnaround at Ausable Forks and back to Jay again before a long, hard slog uphill to Lake Placid. This relatively flat 20-mile stretch is my favorite part of the course, no traffic lights, no stop signs; an opportunity to crouch into my aerobars, put my head down and pedal. Such a delight after months of training rides out of Manhattan, over the George Washington Bridge and along 9W, with its incessant stops and never-ending traffic. I keep my power output in the 135-140 watt range and constantly sip water, pop salted pistachios and nibble my Juice Press Gladiator Cookies. Nutrition, pace, and discipline. Maintaining an intake of 200-300 calories an hour is going to get harder as the day progresses. Approaching mile 34 the flat road quickly gives way to a steep climb that marks the beginning of the 20-mile jaunt from Jay back to Lake Placid and the start of the second loop. Arriving at the Olympic Sports Complex, I clock my time for the first loop at 3 hours 23 minutes. “If I maintain that pace I’ll do the bike in under 7 hours,” I mentally congratulate myself, “that’ll put me in prime position to finish the race in under 14 hours”. Only stopping briefly at the Special Needs area to restock my nutrition, I’m off. As Paul had predicted, maintaining a steady power output was getting progressively harder even on the flat, yet my discipline on the first loop was paying off. At mile 90 I’m passing more and more riders as they recover from each climb while I maintain a steady power output. Descending into Lake Placid for the last time the cheers and screams of the spectators erupt once again, I can’t help but smile, “112 miles down, just a marathon to go.” Nowhere else could the words “just a marathon to go” elicit a smile except at an Ironman. The bike has taken me 7 hours 8 minutes, just shy of my 7-hour goal, but I’ve improved my overall rank by 254 places, moving from 1710 to 1456. Now it’s time to see if my discipline pays off. It’s coming up to 4 pm.

With the 9-hour mark approaching, to beat 14 hours I need to complete the run in under 5 hours. Running is far from being my strongest pursuit. I know I’m going to be slower than most in the swim, but there’s something about the monotony of swimming that allows me to zone out as I count my strokes. Biking is my favorite, my legs pump rhythmically, the wind rushes past my face, and there’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from human-powered speed over the ground. But running, running is just a grind. Maybe it’s because of the muscle tissue I lost from both legs as a result of my electrocution 11 years ago, or perhaps I just need to train harder. Rarely have I ever zoned out while running and with 1600 feet of climbing ahead it’s unlikely I’ll be zoning out today. Barring a catastrophe, it looks like I’ll smash my previous Ironman best of 14 hours 45 minutes that I set in Cozumel 7 years ago on a much easier course. But can I do it under 14 hours? My best run time was at Ironman Lake Tahoe, 5 hours 45 minutes. My run at Ironman Cozumel was terrible, over 6 hours. Pulling off a 5-hour run based on that track record is by no means a certainty. Just focus on each mile as it comes. I settle into my 9-minute run, 1-minute walk intervals. At mile 6 mile I’m an hour in; an average of 10:00 minutes per mile, a fast pace for me. I can feel the fatigue seeping into my road-weary legs as I struggle to take anything into my churning stomach. Passing mile 13 I’m halfway there, but my pace has slowed to 11:20 per mile. My body desperately wants to walk yet I urge myself to complete “just” another mile, then another, “I’ll walk after this mile,” I tell myself, yet never do. My pace is slowing, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30, 14:00 and at mile 23 I cave in and walk, I’m done. Hopes of breaking 5 hours recede into the distance. It takes 15 minutes to walk mile 24, and then something magical happens.

The last brutal climb to the Olympic Sports Complex is behind me, the energy of the crowd seduces me, I hear my name called out by spectators cheering me on, “you’re nearly there,” they shout. The energy intensifies, and I look at the radiant faces of each stranger holding out their hand for a high five. My legs start to pick up, and I break into a run again. “It’s not over yet,” I tell myself, “you can do it.” Mile 25 passes in 11 minutes 36 seconds, and still my legs go faster. It’s as if I’m Forrest Gump running from the bullies, braces breaking away from my legs and freeing them to run. I lean forward to keep up with them as mile 26 passes in 9 minutes 53 seconds. Entering the Olympic speedskating oval that today doubles as the finish chute for Ironman Lake Placid the crowd crescendos, shouting, screaming, banging and stomping, their energy carrying each athlete across the line. White light electrifies the last 50 yards as I hear Mike Reilly, the Voice of Ironman, announce:

Keiron McCammon, you are an Ironman!

I didn’t quite break the 14-hour mark that day. I finished the run in 5 hours 2 minutes and the race in 14 hours and 39 seconds. I beat my previous best by 44 minutes, set seven years ago on a much easier course and my run was 43 minutes faster than my best time from Lake Tahoe four years ago. I made up 304 places on the run to finish 1152 overall and most importantly to finish 1st in the Physically Challenged division! I guess that discipline paid off after all.

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