Who is Team Bad Ass?

So here is the general idea. We are two drunks training to compete in an Ironman triathlon race in 2011.

That too general for you? Fine. Here's more. Our names are Matt and Jim. (We'll leave it in the first-person-plural for now because I am not sure who will be writing the majority of the blog entries.) We are both 25 years old and currently living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Actually Matt lives in Rockford, Michigan but you really don't have to know the difference unless you were stalking him, and in that case you probably already knew that.

We became friends and training partners during the summer of 2009. For the most part we have no idea what we are doing: we don't have trainers, we don't have coaches, and we certainly don't have sponsors (AA or commercial). We started out small, we picked out a local triathlon to compete in, and then started training. To say that our training was minimal would be an understatement tantamount to calling herpes a “minor annoyance”.

Say what you will about the buddy system, it fucking works. On numerous occasions, one of us was feeling like shit, couldn't handle the distance, or wanted to quit. In any of these situations, there is nothing more motivational than having your friend call you a "pussy". We have come a long way from where we started, but we are not even close to our destination.

Our general plan (if you can call it that) is to run numerous smaller events, scattered throughout our two-year training schedule before the big one. The purpose of this blog is to record our progress, detail some of the individual events we participate in, share some of our twisted insights with you. Because it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.