it was honestly pretty easy

This is the full story of my first full Ironman - Ironman Western Australia 2025. 3.8km swim, 180km bike, 42km run. Everything went perfectly... until 18 kilometers into the marathon, when my body completely shut down. I thought I knew what hard was. 20 years of professional soccer, countless hours of training, competing at the highest level. I thought I was prepared. I wasn't. This isn't a highlight reel. This is what really happens when you push yourself to absolute breaking point. 📍 Race: Ironman Western Australia, Busselton 📅 Date: December 7, 2025 With my first child due in March 2026, this was my last big race before becoming a father. I wanted to test myself, to see what I was capable of, to prepare myself for the challenges ahead. I got more than I bargained for. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:43 - Moments After The Race 01:39 - Race Day Story 08:11 - 11 Days Later ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ COMING UP IN 2026: - June - Ironman Cairns - July - Ironman 70.3 Salem, Oregon - September - Ironman Sunshine Coast ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ If you're thinking about doing your first Ironman, or you're curious about what the experience is really like - this is it. The good, the bad, and the moments where I wanted to quit every five seconds. Thanks for watching. - Noah ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📧 Business: noah@noahcavanaugh.com 📸 Instagram: @noahcavanaugh 🎥 Filming: @jackfoleycreative --- #ironman #triathlon #ironmantraining #firstironman #racedocumentary #endurancesports #ironmandocumentary #busselton #westernaustralia I'm Noah Cavanaugh, ex-professional footballer turned triathlete and brand strategist. This channel is the unfiltered look at what I'm building, how I'm training, and the mindset behind it all. On this channel, you'll find: → Behind-the-scenes of building Athleadership and working with clients → Triathlon training as a former team sport athlete → The honest reality of career transitions after sport → Lessons on personal branding (that I'm learning in real-time) If you're an athlete thinking about what's next, or already in the middle of figuring it out, this channel is for you. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎯 Want structured personal branding education? Subscribe to the Brace channel: @BraceAthletes 🔥 Join the FREE Brace Community: https://skool.com/brace 📩 Weekly newsletter: https://noahcavanaugh.com/newsletter ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 CONNECT WITH ME: → Instagram: @noah.cavanaugh → LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/noah-cavanaugh → Website: https://noahcavanaugh.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Music I use: https://share.epidemicsound.com/2yesys 💼 My recommended tools & products: https://noahcavanaugh.com/noahs-picks As an Amazon Affiliate, I may earn commissions from purchases through these links. Thanks for supporting the channel!