My first ocean swim was in February 2009 when I was encouraged to swim to raise money for a mate's wife who had breast cancer. At the time I was over 120kg, extremely unfit and wasn’t confident swimming a lap in the pool let alone a kilometre from Shelley Beach to Manly. My 14yo daughter was so worried I would drown that she swam alongside me.

My first triathlon in 2011 was a sprint. Not far into the 5k run, I swore I would never ever do anything longer! But I had caught the triathlon bug and in 2012 took on an Olympic distance event. My first IM70.3 at Busso in May 2015 took 5 hours 52 minutes. After getting a coach I returned to Busso the following year and crossed the line in 4:53. It no doubt helped that I was in training for the Cairns Ironman six weeks later but the feeling of knocking an hour off my time was no less euphoric. I completed Cairns in a time of 11:38.57. It was the furthest I had ever swam, cycled or run and to this day I have never run a solo Marathon.

I qualified for the IM70.3 World Championships in 2016 at Mooloolaba and again in 2017 at Tennessee. Then I set my sights on Kona.

Determined to leave nothing behind in my preparation, I gave up alcohol on 1 January 2018.

It was worth it – In December 2018 I qualified for Kona and in October 2019 competed in the Ironman World Championships. It was the culmination of a ten-year, life changing journey. And it doesn’t stop there…