13: JOSH - IS AN IRONMAN WORTH IT? ANY REGRETS?

**Josh Harmon** (0:02)
Na na na na, na na na na, na na. You are the music in, are the music in. Hello, hello, sippers, and welcome back to What's The Sip? A podcast by friends for friends. Today's episode is a little bit different. It's not necessarily by friends because it's just me, but I'm my own friend, I think, so. But this is also could be still be for your friends. So we haven't, I haven't done a solo episode since my very, very first one, my intro one. And I'll get into it. But I kind of wanted to do this one. A lot of honestly reasons for me to do a little bit of reflection because this past Thursday, I hit my six month mark of being six months out from my Iron Man race. And I really haven't talked about it much except for since my very first episode. And so I kind of want to just like recap what the past six months have been like, because I guess it's almost been six months since I started training too. To recap that, to look ahead, a couple of times on Instagram, I threw out the question box to get people's questions about my Iron Man. So I thought I would answer some of those. But before we get into all of that, today's Sipper of the Week, we're going to do a two for one, because two people kind of said the same thing. But for a Sipper of the Week is Anna Bradford. She said one of the weeks or one of the times she sent in the Shirley Temple poppy, which I think I've tried. I think I think Linnea, if I'm assuming you're listening, I think you gave me one. And I really liked it. Shirley Temple poppy is really good. And then Luke Gooproad, he just said Shirley Tempies with the cherry emoji. So it's like it feels in a very similar vein, but Sippers of the Week are Luke Gooproad and Anna Bradford in the Sip of the Week for them. And if you haven't tried is a Shirley Temple, whether it's a Shirley Temple poppy or the other normal one, I guess, the OG Shirley Temple, go out and try one. And then my Sip of the Day is, oh, it's also a poppy. This is the cranberry fizz poppy from Christmas that I have a thousand of them that I'm still honestly working through. I was thinking about it today, and I'm like, I actually need to start drinking these faster because I don't think they expire or anything like that, but this is my sip.
And they are still good. It's honestly better not in the Christmas time because I feel like I have something that nobody else has, which is fun. So that's my sip of the day. And oh, also about just future guests and just the flow of the podcast. I would just love people's feedback. And so if there is something or someone that you want to see on the podcast, let me know. And I will do my best to get them on. I'm really open to who I have on. I would love to have everybody on at some point, whatever that means.
But what does that mean?
But I am like, yeah, I would love to just chat with people. And even people that I'm not necessarily quote unquote friends with, I know I say buy friends for friends, but I want to be friends with other people and new people. And I have said this repeatedly, but I want to keep amplifying the stories of people that I think do extraordinary things, whatever. I really, I don't know if you're listening, but Joy from Cuckoo, I really, really still want you to be on. And I know you're a little nervous. That is OK. But I'll still keep working on it. And so, yeah, if there is something that you want to see, someone that you want to see, shoot me a message, text me, shoot me a DM at What's The Sip on Instagram, and we'll figure that all out. So without further adieu, we will get right into talking about my Ironman race. And I'll do a little bit of recap of what I shared in my very first episode of the podcast about because I did my first episode on my birthday, which was in November. And so at that point, I think I'd been training for maybe like a month or maybe not even quite a month yet. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a couple of questions that I got that asked, like, why I'm doing it and, you know, like what prompted me or like pushed me to like sign up for it. And so I'll kind of do a little backtrack in that sense of, I really don't know why I signed up for it. I want to say that it was spontaneous, but it wasn't like the most spontaneous thing. Like my friend Guthrie and I had like kind of very, very briefly talked about them. But I don't even think at that point, I really knew what it was or what it entailed. And oh, and this may be helpful if you don't know what an Iron Man is, I'll tell you, it's a triathlon. And a triathlon is a swim bike run. You do it all back to back. And for an Iron Man race, you will swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and then run a marathon 26.2 miles. So that's what I signed up for. And you might be saying to yourself, how, why, what? And I would say to you, exactly. Because I think I ask myself that a lot. But that's what an Iron Man is. And the race that I signed up for is in Maryland in September. So my race is September 19th of this year. And I picked the Maryland course mostly because it's flat. The bike and the run are very, very flat, which I feel like I really wanted because I don't feel like biking uphills. I don't feel like running uphills. That makes me feel like I would rather just pass away and lie down on the concrete and not finish. Whereas I feel like I have a little bit of hope to do well. I'm not really even competing to do well or anything like that, or racing to do well for time or anything. But you get what I'm saying. I just wanted a flat course. And that was the closest one with the right timeframe, because it was like I signed up the last weekend of September and my race is like the second to last weekend of September this year. So almost like a full 12 months. So now I will just kind of go through these questions and see what comes of it. So, so PD Polad, Emma's mom, she asked me how she said, how do you accomplish the training? And I am not entirely sure I understand the question, but I'm going to, I'm going to just take it as face value. So how I accomplish it. So what I do is I break down my training. And I right now I swim about three times a week. I my training just changed because I'm doing a couple of run races this year. But I guess overall, generically speaking, I swim three times a week, bike twice, run twice, and then either bike or run once more. So like that bike is or that bike run is interchangeable. Some weeks will be twice a week, some weeks will be three times a week. So I kind of I just rotate through the three and then I strength train two ish days a week, sometimes three, sometimes the third one is just like mobility and recovery. So that's how I accomplish the training. I am not a morning gym person. I would just much rather sleep in. So I am typically like an evening gym goer. So I will like go to work and then after work, I'll go to the gym and I'll do all the things. So in full transparency, I've said this on my Iron Man Instagram, but like the biking is really, really hard indoors. If you've been to my apartment, Charlie and I's apartment, my bike's in the corner. And I just really hate sitting on the bike indoors. When I bike outside, like this past fall when I was biking outside, it was so fun. And like, I felt like I could do it for a while, but I just cannot do that inside. So I'm making a little bit less than I should right now, but we'll pick it back up once the weather gets nice, which it is, so that's good. Okay, next question, Anna Bradford asked, what's your why? And that's a good question. Like, do I have an answer for that? I probably do. My why is that I think it's really good to do hard things. I love, I'm a really big dreamer. I have loved to like set really big goals for myself and try to like accomplish something really difficult. I also, I don't know what this like says about me. So like, take this as you will. But I really like to do something that I feel like not a lot of people do. And I don't know if that's like conceded or like too egocentric, but I just think it's fun to do something like that. So, and also I said this in my first episode, but like, I'm not gonna get any younger. I have a very flexible job right now. I have a lot of free time right now. And so I kind of have the ability to commit myself to something like this Iron Man that will, that is taking up so much of my time and like taking advantage of like my age and the shape that my body's in right now. So, so I guess that's my why. Uh-oh, there goes my phone.