Advice and ideas please.

Hi All,

By way of introduction my name is Steve Gerbson. I have a rather unique story. In January 2016 I will be celebrating my 65TH birthday and as a gift to myself for hitting that milestone plan on entering the Lavaman Race in Hawaii which is an Olympic distance tri. So you are now asking yourself what is so unusual about that.

Here how the story begins. I have been athletic all of my life playing football in high school and college, have run 9 marathons and probably done at least 10 triathlons, the longest being the Olympic distance. My last race was the L.A. Triathlon in 2012.
In December 2013, while in Santa Fe, NM I had a catastrophic medical event called an Ascending Aortic Dissection, the walls of your aorta rupture. Not a good thing. Forty percent of victims of this affliction do not make it to the hospital and those who do only one in three survive. After a nine hour surgery and the doctors having to back in a second time I am very fortunate to be one of those who made it. The doctors said the primary reason I made it was because of my conditioning and being in such good shape.

The first few months of 2014 was spent recovering and by May I was back at work and in the pool. By the end of June I was back to full swim workouts and riding my bike again. I was feeling pretty good and very thankful that I was still here.
Unfortunately I found out in October that the doctors would have to go back in and for another surgery on a different part of my Aorta. Rather than being opened up again I was introduced to a brilliant vascular surgeon who told me he could do the operation with an endovascular procedure. He said I would be in the hospital one day and back in the pool in a week. The surgery went perfectly and I was out in one day but it did take me a few weeks to get back into the pool. It's amazing what modern medicine can do.

With the blessing of my doctors, and as you can imagine there are quite a few, am happy to say I'm back to full swim workouts doing about 10,000 yards a week. I rode for the first time yesterday and started some strength training today.
I'm asking your advice in two areas.

The first is, I need a training plan. It should focus on swimming and biking. There are issues with the running portion of the race. In spite of all the marathons I have a very bad left knee with a 30% bone on bone situation. In the past I have done the majority of my run training in a pool with flotation device and have held to running in the street for the only the last two of weeks before the race. I am not too concerned about the swim bike portion but am a little concerned about the run. I am not interested in a relay and want to compete the race on my own. Any Ideas or tips to help me with the run would be greatly appreciated.

The second and more difficult, do any of you know of any companies that be interested in helping me with sponsorship for this race. This is probably a pretty difficult one to crack but any suggestions would be very helpful.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Life is truly a gift. When you get a second chance you try and make the most of it.

I can be reached at [email protected]