Everything I actually use, in one place. Links go to the maker or the service, not to a store page I profit from. There are no affiliate links on this page today; the disclosure page explains what changes if that ever changes.
Follow the training live
- Strava: every run, ride and swim, as it happens. Follow there if you want the raw sessions before they become a monthly report.
- Garmin Connect: where the numbers live. The Fenix 8 and the scale feed it; the monthly reports are pulled from it.
- The Journey: the monthly training reports on this site, with weight, distance, sleep and what went wrong.
The race
- Ironman Jacksonville, May 16, 2027. The whole site points at this date.
- 10K, October 31, 2026. The first race of the build.
Gear
The short list. The full page with what failed and why is Gear I Use.
- Garmin Fenix 8 and the Garmin HRM 600 chest strap.
- Garmin scale, every morning since February 1.
- X-Lab RS7 road bike.
- Wahoo Kickr Core trainer, ridden on Zwift indoors.
- ASICS Superblast 3 and ASICS Megablast. Wide toe box, light, the shoes that stuck.
- Nike Vomero Plus, retired: comfortable but heavy late in a long run.
- Half tights instead of shorts. Ended the chafing in a day.
- AirPods Pro 3 on the run, Beats over-ear on the trainer.
- Trisuit: an inexpensive one from Amazon. It works.
Fuel
- Tailwind in the bottles on long sessions.
- BPN G.1.M Sport and Raw Nutrition carbs before and during long rides and runs.
- Real food the rest of the time: beef, chicken, steak, rice.
Where I train
- YMCA of Greater Richmond: the pool and the indoor track. I cancelled the powerlifting gym for it.
- The roads around Richmond, Virginia, and the trainer in the spare room.
- A triathlon coach writes the week. Monday rest, two swims, two rides, two runs and a Saturday brick.
Medication and peptides: what I used
I am going to say this plainly, because leaving it out would be a lie of omission: I believe these saved my life. In 2025 I took semaglutide for about three months and lost around 12 pounds. Since December 2025 I have taken retatrutide. It turned off the food noise on day one, and for someone who had eaten for comfort since childhood, that silence was the difference between another failed attempt and 71 pounds. I have also used compounds sold strictly for research: MOTS-C, BPC-157 and GHK-Cu. I reached for them for energy, for recovery and for my skin. I cannot prove they did any of those things. What I can say is that I was rarely tired, I recovered, and I kept going.
Here is the other half, and it matters more than the first. None of these is approved for human use. Retatrutide is an investigational drug still in clinical trials. The research compounds are sold with a label that says not for human consumption; they are not made under pharmacy standards, and taking them was a risk I took on myself, without medical supervision. I am not recommending any of it, I am not going to tell you where to get it, and you will not find a link to it on this site. If you are heavy and desperate, I understand that desperation better than most people. Take it to a doctor first. That is the only advice on this page.
The full account, with dates, is in What losing 71 pounds actually changed.
Everything else
- Start Here: the house rules and the numbers so far.
- Now: what this week looks like.
- The weekly email: one honest training week plus the training log spreadsheet.
- Contact: questions, corrections, requests.