YOU ARE AN… 94% Ironman -

A Little Background

I’ve done this before.

Ironman Florida, 2011. Crossed that finish line and felt something I hadn’t felt before, the particular satisfaction of doing something most people would never attempt. Went back in 2013 and did it again and got to hear again what we all went there to here… Chris Freeman, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN! In between and after, varying distances, varying years, the same basic idea. Push yourself. See what you’ve got.

Then life did what life does. Work became a grind. The races spaced out, then stopped. The routine that had kept me sharp physically and mentally quietly disappeared, and somewhere in there I let myself get out of shape and out of the habit of pushing myself. It happens gradually and then all at once you look up one day and realize you’ve settled into exactly the kind of comfortable mundane you swore you never would.

When they announced Ironman Tulsa would be the last one held there, something clicked.

Tulsa isn’t just a race venue for our family. My wife was born and raised there. Three of our five kids were born there. We spent the first ten years of our marriage building our family there. This city is woven into who we are. And when they said it was the last one, that sealed it.

But it wasn’t just nostalgia. I knew I needed a hard goal. Something big enough to force me back into a routine, to shake off the fog, to do something again for the betterment of myself, my faith, and my family. A finish line worth training toward.

So I signed up. Eight months out. One more shot.

Race Day

I made it 94% of the way.

At mile 18 of the run, I pulled the plug. Here’s what I wrote about it the next morning, still raw, still processing:

Two Years Later

I’ve thought about that race a lot since May 2023.

What I wrote that morning was true. The philosophy was right. Do hard things, fail forward, don’t settle. I believed it then and I believe it more now. But what I wasn’t clear on at the time is that DNF wasn’t just a hard lesson. It was a turning point that catapulted me into regularly seeking hard things again.

Not just the big stuff. Not just the races and the sufferfests and the things that require eight months of training. The day rides with friends, the hikes, the paddleboarding, the laid back adventures that don’t require a finish line but do require showing up. Those matter just as much. Maybe more. Because that’s where the real conversations happen. When you’re two hours into a ride or floating down a river, your guard comes down and you start talking about life. Actually talking about it. That active, unhurried time with people you care about is its own kind of hard thing, because most of us don’t make enough space for it.

Not every ride has to be an epic. Not every adventure has to hurt. But you have to keep moving, keep showing up, keep saying yes to the thing that gets you off the couch. That shift has carried me right up to today, and honestly it’s still carrying me.

And I started thinking about where I focus myself when things get hard, both physically and emotionally. For me and my family, that’s our faith. The belief that God has a plan, that He’s present in the journey even when we can’t see where it’s leading. That’s not a passive thing. It doesn’t just show up on its own. You have to be intentional about it. You have to pursue it the same way you pursue a training plan or a hard goal, deliberately, consistently, even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.

That’s something the DNF clarified for me. When you strip away the finish line and you’re sitting with the disappointment, what you fall back on matters. Your faith, your family, your reasons for doing hard things in the first place. Those are the things that tell you whether the attempt was worth it. For me the answer was yes. Not because I finished. Because of who I was trying to become in the process, and because I wasn’t doing it alone.

Miles After Monday exists because of that shift.

This site, these stories, whatever this becomes, it’s built on the back of a failed Ironman in a city our family loves, by a guy who got comfortable and needed something hard to wake him back up. Physically, mentally, spiritually. I’m still waking up. Still figuring it out. But I’m not settling, and I’m not done.

That’s the whole point.

So What About You?

What hard things have you been putting off? Don’t. Just go try them and see how far you get, you’ll probably be amazed at what you get out of it.

Even if you only make it 94% of the way.