023: Brad Brown races his 5th Ironman at Ironman South Africa 2016

This week on the podcast I chat with Brad Brown about his most recent Ironman Finish. He just finished Ironman South Africa which was his 5th Ironman finish.

Brad Brown like myself is a host of a podcast. His podcast is called The Kona Edge. He is a sports journalist in the beautiful country of South Africa.

He started his journey to endurance sports with an attempt at the very famous Comrades Marathon in 2010. But before he could give that a go he had to lose some weight. He tells the story of his journey losing 1/3 of his body weight and the trip to the start and the finish of Comrades Marathon and then also Ironman South Africa.

Brad talks about how he found his way to triathlon by adding cross training to his run training.

We chat about how he got from racing Ironman and running to podcasting. The only way to get onto the Kona Edge is to make it to the world championships in Kona. Which has got to be one of the most stringent criteria for being a podcast guest out there.

This is Brad's 5th Ironman but like many people he battled an injury during training and he did not have the training build up he had hoped for.

We talk all about the Ironman South Africa course and the weather conditions in Port Elizabeth.

Brad tells the story of his race at Ironman South Africa 2016.

We talk about walking an Ironman marathon.

We talk about racing with family. He's raced with both his brother and his father.

I learned that in South Africa they call jelly fish blue bottles which is a much prettier name than Portuguese Man o' War like we call them in the States.

We talk about battling through dark spots during the race and the amazing energy of an Ironman Finish Line.

We talk about his favorite part of the Ironman South Africa course.

We talk about the event that may or may not have happened with pro Triathlete Jodi Swallow and a television helicopter that may have knocked her off her bike.

Brad and I speak about how to stay motivated when training for Ironman year after year. He gives some good advice and it's worth  a listen.

We do some chatting about the dream of going to the Ironman World Championships in Kona.

Brad is going to be running the Cape Town Marathon. And the Ultra Trail Cape Town.  He's also got 2 Oceans and Ironman South Africa, JoBerg to Sea and Comrades marathon again.

He is also putting together an online summit about all things Ironman. Check it out at www.theimsummit.com ( I've already signed up).