Last week, I was asked to do an interview as part of the Chicago Triathlon race. As one of my goals is to get more AWD/PT competitors out to races, I immediately agreed. The article by Bill Bird of the Naperville Sun is below.
Naperville Sun – 7.15.16 (Bill Bird)
If you would like to receive updates on what I’m doing, please click Subscribe on the left-hand menu. And if you would like to support me, plase visit my Race2Raise page.
I know going outside of your comfort zone is a scary thing to do. Within it, you know what to expect, what’s going to happen, and feel like you can contro things. But if you’re willing to take the chances, take calculated risks and be uncomfortable, you’ll get far more than you could ever expect.
In a nutshell, my 2015 exploded and was amazing because I went out of the comfort zone. This is what my entire 2015 was supposed to be
:
Shamrock Shuffle, BTN Big 10K, Naperville Sprint Triathlon
Trips to WI and MI
This is what my 2015 ended up being:
Run As One, Shamrock Shuffle, Celebrate Differences 5K, Sly Fox 10K, Dare2Tri Tri It Tri, Naperville Sprint Triathlon, Batavia Half Marathon, ITU World Triathlon Grand Finale, Fraidy Cat 10K, Team RWB San Diego 5K, Team RWB KC 5K
Rock climbing for the first time
Trips to WI, MI, NY (including a drive back west) & KC
Introduction to the VI community, Team RWB and Dare2Tri
Volunteer opportunities with Reverb (which I had to decline due to great aunt’s passing)
Dare2Tri PT Camp
Swim classes as part of Tri training
Oh, and all of the media coverage, which started with a simple interview and grew into a huge snowball. Please see the link above for all of the links.
Throughout the year, my coaches have pushed me, not just to get to what I need for the race(s), but to continue going further. I am truly grateful to all of them, although I’m sometimes uncomfortable during the workouts. But no pain, no gain — and you don’t get better by being comfortable.
Through the introductions to Team RWB (which started because of my reading of rules), I’ve had the opportunity to meet some amazing people – both former service members and civilians. And the introduction to Dare2Tri (which started because it’s Executive Director was the Shamrock Shuffle AWD coordinator), gave me opportunities that I didn’t even know existed. Not just from the raining or race aspects, but more from the human aspect. Getting to meet, interact with, and spend the weekend with the group changed my thinking on many things. For more on that, please see the Dare2Tri Camp blog here
While 2015 was an amazing year, I’m looking forward to 2016! I’ve got 22 events planned, along with several personal trips. I will share the event schedule once everything’s finalized. The first race with be the Life Time Indoor Tri this coming Sunday in Romeoville.
Earlier this month, I started looking at 2016 events and penciling things in. I’ll turn them from pencil to pen as soon as I have firm dates for things. While I had a solid base for 2016, I had to re-evaluate all of that after what happened last Monday.
As has been mentioned in previous posts (including the Daily Herald articles), I am legally blind. Not only was that confirmed on Monday, but also that the depredation rate over a five year period has doubled.
After having a week to digest all of that, I decided that I needed to try and accelerate a couple of projects before the sight gets worse. One of these is the Football project that I’ve mentioned before (http://www.jamesgilliard.com/the-dream.php). But since none of them are financially feasible in 2016, I have put together a GoFundMe page to try and attend at least 1. The goal would cover multiple camp experiences, and I’ve set that as a HUGE goal since I don’t know at what point it will get to the point I can’t play football any more.
You can view the GoFundMe page at http://www.gofundme.com/loveoffootball. If you can’t financially support the project, please at least share it with family and friends via e-mail, social media, etc. Thanks in advance for your help and support!