Thank you 2016

Wow, what a year as a beginner triathlete. 

I had a new baby. Well, technically my wife did the hard work, but we welcomed a new little dood into this world. 
I swam lots.
I biked lots.

I ran lots. 

Completed three triathlons.

Stomped 100’s of hours of training. 

Raised thousands in memory of my dear friend Emily who continues to inspire me. 

My pal Holly got her transplant from her mom! So stoked for them. 

Had lots of fun with my famalam. My four year old swam his first solo 25m front crawl. My 10 month old was thrown in the air (in the pool) and clapped on landing. Got to surf with the oldest in Portugal…that list could go on forever.

And some pretty cool stuff happened for TriPals too. We got to interview some triathlon beginners like Laura Montgomery (though she did get hit by lightning in 2016 so hopefully 2017 is her year!). We also talked to some of the worlds best in triathlon like Jodie Stimpson, Non Stanford and Helen Jenkins to help find us some inspiration! We talked to pentathlete and all round awesome athlete Jess Davis. Ian Williams started the year out doing 31 tri’s in 31 days. Inspiration was our goal and they definitely helped!

And then there were the random ramblings of a triathlon beginner blogger. We talked about how to stay motivated in winter. Some fun workouts to mix it up a bit. How to swim without pain. A DNF (still a sore point!). Training with a family in tow…. and a few thousand other words! 
We also wrote about how we SMASHED IT for our first Olympic triathlon. 

Yea, it’s been an awesome year and we hope to continue to inspire and intrigue in 2017. 

Thank you all for the amazing support in 2016. I couldn’t have done it without the fun training times with my TriPal Rachel or the amazing support of my wonderfabulous family. To my wifey and boys, thank you! 

I hope you all have an amazing year.

Matt