Hong Kong to Hawaii The Road to 2027 Starts Here

First, I need to get something out of the way.

I'm not doing this because being a "hybrid athlete" is cool now.

I've been combining endurance and strength sports for years. I just didn't know I was supposed to put it in my Instagram bio.

The truth is much simpler.

I love HYROX.

I love Ironman. I like cooking on my bike way too much after getting out of the water to give that up. And frankly, I've invested way too much money into that bike to let it become wall art.

I've also reached a point where I can accept a few things.

I'm probably not becoming an Elite 15 HYROX athlete.

I'm probably not becoming a professional Ironman.

And I'm okay with that. Because I've realized that specializing entirely in one doesn't excite me nearly as much as seeing how good I can become at both.

So that's the experiment.

Hong Kong to Hawaii.

My goal is to qualify for and race the 2027 HYROX World Championships in Hong Kong in June, then qualify for and return to the Ironman World Championship in Kona later that year.

I have a shot at the Age Group podium of both, which before anyone thinks only Age group? You have no idea how hard it is to even qualify to be there. One spot each Age group at Hyrox. Two to 4 spots at Ironman. Hundreds of athletes.

Two World Championships.

Two completely different demands.

One body.

Hopefully a healthier one this time.

2026: Hyrox Champs to Ironman Champs

That was actually the goal this year.

HYROX Championships to Ironman Championships.

And I failed miserably.

Not necessarily because of the results. I still raced. I still competed. I still had moments I'm incredibly proud of.

But the year I imagined and the year I actually lived were very different.

Mono.

Repeated illnesses.

Burnout.

Depression and anxiety.

Sleepless nights.

Gut issues.

And eventually, a celiac disease diagnosis.

The entire year felt hard.

I constantly felt like I was behind.

Every time I took two or three steps forward, something knocked me five steps backward.

The original plan was to accumulate easy bike and swim volume throughout the HYROX season so that transitioning into Ironman training would be relatively seamless.

Instead, there were days when simply getting on my bike and pedalling easily felt difficult.

And I kept trying to explain it away.

"It's the book. You'll feel better when the book is finished."

Then the book came out.

"It's the gym. Once you get through this next push, you'll feel better."

Then I'd get through that.

There was always another explanation.

For a long time, I thought I was dealing with some mysterious combination of low-functioning burnout, depression, anxiety and overtraining.

Turns out... it may have been spaghetti and PB&J sandwiches. Of all the things I’ve battled in my life, I really didn’t see bread making the list.

But after a very difficult year, I finally have some answers.

More importantly, I have some things I can actually change.

So that's where this journey begins.

Not with a massive training block.

Not with a ridiculous fitness test.

Not with some heroic 25-hour training week.

We're starting at the very bottom of the mountain.

And we're getting healthy.

Phase One: Build the Human

Before I worry about building the athlete, I need to take better care of the human.

That means two things I'm going to take more seriously than I ever have before:

Nutrition and sleep.

Nutrition

The upside of being forced onto a completely gluten-free diet is that I'm eating cleaner and paying more attention to what I'm putting into my body than I probably ever have.

And I already feel significantly better.

My gut isn't going to heal overnight, so I'm looking at this as another part of the long game.

Eat properly.

Fuel training.

Recover.

Let my body heal.

Repeat.

Sleep

This one might be even bigger.

I've struggled with sleep my entire life, but the last couple of years have been particularly bad.

I hear people say:

"I only got five hours last night."

Meanwhile, I'd be thinking:

Five?! You lucky bastard.

There were nights when I didn't sleep at all and still tried to train the next morning.

My logic was actually this:

I should get the workout done first thing because I'll be completely cooked by 11 a.m.

Looking back, this may not have been the groundbreaking sports-science strategy I thought it was.

So there are new rules:

● Phone off at 8 p.m.
● Maximum two coffees per day, finished before 11 a.m.
● No sugar or sweeteners after 2 p.m.
● TV off at 9 p.m. — Leafs games receive diplomatic immunity.
● Stay ahead of work so I'm not finishing things late at night.
● Deal with conflict instead of carrying it to bed.
● And sometimes, that means squashing the beef. Other times it means saying goodbye to the cow entirely.

The goal isn't perfection.

It's creating an environment where my body actually has a chance to recover.

Because I can't keep asking my body to perform at a high level while treating recovery like it's optional.

The Big Picture

I'll get much deeper into the actual training in the next blog.

Eventually this series will get into the weeds:

Mesocycles.

Four-week blocks.

Mileage.

Bike volume.

Threshold work.

Strength programming.

HYROX-specific sessions.

Swim progression.

Race preparation.

Individual workouts.

What works.

What completely blows up in my face.

I want Hong Kong to Hawaii to document the entire experiment.

But for now, here's the 30,000-foot view.

A+ Goal #1: HYROX World Championships — Hong Kong

June 10–13, 2027.

First I have to get there.

I'm racing HYROX Toronto Open while my body continues to heal, and I genuinely don't care what anyone thinks about that decision.

I'm checking the ego at the door.

The first real target is Vancouver.

That's where I want to start chasing the qualification seriously.

From there, everything builds toward being at my best in Hong Kong.

A+ Goal #2: Ironman World Championship — Kona

Then we turn our attention fully toward Hawaii in October.

But here's one of the biggest lessons I learned from 2026:

I can't wait until HYROX is over to become a triathlete again.

That's too late.

So while HYROX will be the primary competitive focus through the first half of the year, swimming and cycling will quietly be building underneath it the entire time.

Building the Engine Without Breaking the Chassis

Running is already a major component of HYROX preparation.

So I don't need to pile massive amounts of additional running onto my body just to build aerobic capacity.

That's where the bike and pool become incredibly valuable.

Over the next several months, I'll slowly build bike volume through:

Zone 1. Zone 2. Sweet Spot.

Nothing heroic.

If I can gradually reach a point where three hours on the bike feels completely normal — even if much of it is easy — I'll have an enormous head start when the Ironman-specific work begins.

The same goes for swimming.

I pretty much have one swimming speed anyway, so that simplifies the programming.

But I need consistency.

Minimum two swims per week to start then 3 with never letting 3 days go by without feeling the water.

I fell way too far behind in the water this year and paid for it at Ironman Ottawa.

That's not happening again.

The objective isn't to be in peak Ironman shape while training for HYROX.

It's simply to arrive at the end of HYROX season with an aerobic foundation instead of standing at the bottom of another mountain.

Training Smarter

This might be the biggest change of all.

I love a plan.

Maybe too much.

A beautifully designed training plan can make me ignore the very obvious human being standing in the middle of it.

Me.

So this year the plan has to breathe.

I'll still train hard.

There will still be big weeks.

There will still be uncomfortable sessions and ambitious goals.

But easy days actually need to be easy.

Hard days need to happen when I'm capable of benefiting from them.

I'll use HRV as another piece of information, but I'll also use something even more technologically advanced:

Common sense.

If I haven't slept, I'm not smashing a workout simply because TrainingPeaks says Tuesday is threshold day.

If my body is clearly waving a white flag, I'm going to stop pretending it's a checkered one.

Planned Deloads

I've also changed my thinking around deload weeks.

I used to believe they could simply "come to me."

A busy work week?

Deload.

Travel?

Deload.

Sick?

Congratulations, there's your recovery week.

The problem is that life doesn't always cooperate with periodization. So this year I'm deliberately programming recovery.

My deloads will line up with Week 4 of our HiFLUX training blocks at One Academy.

I'll still maintain some intensity, but with longer recovery, reduced overall workload and a deliberate drop in training stress.

Recovery won't be what happens when training goes wrong.

Recovery is part of the training.

The Race Calendar Has a Hierarchy

Every race will also have a job.

There will be A races.

There will be B races.

There will be races that are simply training opportunities.

And I'm going to have to check my ego enough to respect the difference.

That's why I'm doing Toronto HYROX Open.

It's why I opted out of the Toronto Waterfront Marathon this fall.

Could I have forced another marathon build?

Probably.

But I don't want to spend another year constantly trying to catch up.

For once, I want to get ahead.

Healthy first.

Foundation second.

Performance third.

Then we build.

The Long Game

I think that's ultimately what Hong Kong to Hawaii is going to be about.

Yes, I want to qualify for two World Championships.

Yes, I want to race fast.

Yes, I'm still competitive enough to care deeply about the clock and where my name sits on a leaderboard.

That's not going anywhere.

But maybe becoming a better athlete at this point in my life isn't about figuring out how much more suffering I can tolerate.

I've already proven I can suffer.

Maybe the next evolution is learning when not to.

Knowing when to push.

Knowing when to back off.

Knowing which races matter.

Knowing which sessions matter.

Taking sleep as seriously as threshold.

Taking nutrition as seriously as mileage.

Being patient enough to build something instead of constantly testing it.

Because right now, Hong Kong feels a long way away.

Hawaii feels even farther.

And I'm nowhere near the athlete I'll need to be when I get there.

That's okay.

I'm at the bottom of the mountain.

I've been here before.

You don't get to the top by staring at the summit.

You take the first step.

Then another.

Then another.

And if there's one thing my life has taught me, it's that I'm pretty fucking good at taking one more step.

Hong Kong to Hawaii starts now.

Hong Kong to Hawaii The Road to 2027 Starts Here

Hong Kong to Hawaii The Road to 2027 Starts Here