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My first dip into the triathlon pool was quite small, in triathlon standards.  It began, for me, at the Malibu triathlon in 2007.  The sprint race – 0.5 mile swim, 18 mile bike, and 4 mile run – is a light workout for a lot of triathletes.  But for me, in September 2007, crossing the finish line on Zuma Beach was like climbing a mountain.  The day of that race came just 11 months after I underwent a heart transplant.

My life’s health hurdles go well beyond a heart transplant.  Twenty years ago this month I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphnodes.  After five months of radiation and another 18 months of living in remission, the cancer came back.  It was knocked down a second time with six months of chemotherapy, only to come back for a third go-round two years later.

A stem cell transplant followed.  A secondary leukemia diagnosis – and three more years of chemotherapy – followed that.  And surgeries to replace my right hip and left shoulder followed in 2000.  But a couple of titanium joints and a few scars were nowhere near the biggest prices I had to pay to become cancer free.  My heart was damaged from chemotherapy – eventually leading to the transplant in 2006.

So for me crossing the Malibu finish line was so much more than completing a sprint triathlon.  It was about reclaiming the life I thought I had lost and the good health that I had been without for my entire adult life.  But as most triathletes know, there is something very addictive about the sport, the people, and the races.  And something that leads quite a few to push to distances further and further out.  Well count me among the addicted.

In just a few short weeks I will be in Kona competing at the Ford Ironman World Championship.  I am, without a doubt, the most unlikeliest of potential Ironman finishers.  And certainly to be on the doorstep of completing that feat along the famous Kona coast is almost too surreal for words.  Three years ago I couldn’t climb stairs.  Three years ago there was a very real possibility that at any given moment by heart might stop beating.  Three years ago I would have listed a future visit to Mars as more likely for my future than a run down the finishers chute along Ali’I Drive.

Yet here I am, staring down the date of October 10, 2009.  For me it’s more than just the date that I will be on the course with the greatest athletes in the world, no doubt pinching myself every 20 minutes to ensure that I’m not dreaming.  It’s also the exact three-year anniversary of the heart transplant that has given me a second chance at life.

On October 10, 2006, my survival from cancer became complete.  In the waning hours of October 10, 2009, I plan to add the exclamation. 

Check out CNN news or Triathlon Competitor websites for more on Kyle!