Andy Funk

An Unusual Story & Path to Endurance Life

Welcome to Ho’Omau Endurance™! My name is Andy Funk, I am the founder, or if you prefer, Chief Ho’Omau. Now would be a good time to grab a freshly-brewed cup of Kona coffee – you’ll thank me later.

I grew up in a small town outside of Hamburg, Germany in the late 70’s and 80’s, where the weather was never truly great and endurance sports was talked about as much as Michael Jackson’s latest hit single – well, sadly that didn’t happen. Thankfully, my parents let me try out any sport I wanted, so as a young boy I was playing tennis and riding my bike until I crashed it on a fast descent during a weekend getaway trip with the family – and that was it for cycling. I also got into soccer, broke my wrist twice as a goalie, then got into Golf – got really good at it, won a few small tournaments – but that died off immediately after we moved to the big city, and so did soccer and tennis. I swam a lot, too – I loved going to the pool and got my hands on every swim certification you can obtain in Germany (it’s a really big thing over there, seriously). But after getting sucked out into the open Atlantic ocean during a storm in the Canary Islands over winter vacation – very close to dying in the process – that put an end to swimming as well. You only get lucky so many times.

Not sooner as my parents decided to move to Hamburg, the “big” city, I got seriously ill with what they called an “acute inflammatory rheumatic attack”. Rheumatic? I was 10 years old. Yet, I did spend 5 weeks in the children’s hospital and there was talk about possible long-term heart damage. Nobody ultimately knew what I really had, we just knew it was no good because the fever just wasn’t going away. But, with the heart of a future Ironman, I made it out alive – yet again.

My activity level as a young teenager was absolutely incredible: I smoked and drank by age 13 (not necessarily uncommon where I grew up, but still far from ideal), partied, rode my annoyingly-loud 30cc moped to my girlfriend’s house, and stayed up past midnight watching American TV shows that only aired at night in Germany. I remember once having to run 1km during PE at school, and my lungs felt like they wanted to exit my body – oh, how much I hated running. My most impressive accomplishments were skateboarding with my bestie-forever brother Alex and dancing to Michael Jackson videos after school (yep, that was a thing). At least I was doing something.

My parents might have realized I was in a downward spiral athletically speaking and signed my brother and I up for Kyokushinkai Karate (full contact, no protection, yikes) to get both of our butts whipped into shape. It worked, somewhat. Repetitions were always counted in Japanese, so much so that I still count to 10 in Japanese today – no joke. We also learned how to do a crazy amount of pushups and sit-ups, and I could do a split in between two chairs like Jean-Claude Van Damme, because, that stuff was really cool back then.

Ripped with a 6-pack and now eternally unstoppable, life continued forward, and Karate soon became a distant memory, and so did the dancing and skating and splits and sit-ups and pushups. By 16, now equipped with a less-embarrassing 80cc 2-wheeler, I was smoking close to a pack a day, still drinking, still partying, getting tattoos and playing the lead guitar in a band with my crazy long hair. After some lower back pain and an orthopedic check-up one day, the doctor told my Mom that my lower spine “didn’t look so hot”. My Mom probably too it a bit too seriously and took me out of PE for an entire school year. Amazing, now I didn’t even have to do school activities, what more can you ask for!? Burger King and McDonald’s were also frequent stops on my motorcycle rides, and by age 18, I smoked a pack a day (or more) and ate at least one Double Whopper, sometimes two, a day.

I started on Computers in 1983 when I was 7, created the first ever Computer-generated school newspaper in Germany – all way before it was common to have a PC in your home. Clearly, one of the many perks of having a Dad who was CEO of our 140-year old family business, a large insurance brokerage firm that I was slated to probably run one day. But, I was building Computers from scratch, learning to write code and design, and had already been working on my first startup at night, while still in high school. My eyes were laser focused on California, where all the action was happening in technology. The 1990’s were in full swing, and I wanted my part of it.

Sitting in school and at my desk, working on my first business – it truly catapulted my activity level to new heights – if 0 can be counted as a height. Soon after, I got my American feet wet for the first time by touring Route 66 on a bike (I do love those 2-wheelers) from Chicago to Los Angeles during my last legit summer school vacation, and fell in love with the country. I got so excited about moving to California, I did something unusual: I quit smoking cold turkey, I barely drank, and the partying stopped as well. It felt like a re-birth of Andy Funk, the California version. I even cut my long hair.

Getting started in California after I made the tough call to dtich our 5th-generation family business wasn’t easy. After all, who purposefully walks away from an inheritance that would make you insanely rich for life? Well, I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want. Certainly, I was not on good terms with my parents at the time, money was always scarce, credit cards were always maxed out, and eating junk food was the only way to keep the budget together (if you can call that a budget). My favorite of them all, the $0.49 cent meal at Del Taco, and the $0.99 cent burger at Jack in the Box (no longer $0.99, thanks inflation). And because of my buddy Jack, just over 2 years into my crazy California adventure, I weighed in at 206 lbs. Well, is that really that much? No, not necessarily – but I weigh just over 160lbs today, so for me – that was a significant uptick and more than I had ever weighed before.

I couldn’t afford a gym membership, so I started running at 6am in the morning around the city blocks of my less than 500sqf apartment (once you had put the bed inside, the space was gone). It felt like such a looooong run (I remapped the route recently – it was 1.2 miles and it took me 15 minutes). Running was awful – but I kept it up every day, and slowly the weight started coming off. Not soon after, I bought a surfboard and Poseidon showed me just how fun that sport truly is. Just a year later, now in the late 90’s, things were looking up, I could afford a gym membership at Bally Total Fitness in Studio City, and participated in Bill Phillip’s very first Body For Life Challenge (remember that?), because again, that stuff was just cool back then!

5 years into my California adventure, still in my early 20’s, I had not just become a non-smoking, 180’ish-weighing gym rat who would do a “killer” 30-min 3-miler run at the gym for cardio and surf all Saturday and Sunday, I had also sold three businesses and founded a venture capital firm that focused on social impact, sports, health & wellness. On Wednesdays, I would take my team (those crazy enough to go) out to Malibu at 6am to go on a 3-mile run in the sand, some sit-ups and some surfing, if the waves were good. Afterwards, a nice warm breakfast at the village and a late start to the office. We called it the “Feel Good Days”, and yes, they felt good and I miss them a lot. I introduced David, my associate back then, to the local gym and showed him how to lift with proper form. Last I heard, he’s still a gym rat 20 years later – gotta love it!

An opportunity came along to purchase what was then LA’s biggest indoor spinning studio, including a small adjacent gym, so I teamed up with some friends and we bought the place, because, why not? For the first time in almost 20 years since my bike crash as a kid, I was back on a bike. Celebs would come and go all day and spin their hearts out over some music and gossip, and I would fire up the speaker system to 100% for myself in the late evening to do a hardcore solo workout when everyone was gone. Life was good.

Meanwhile in Europe, my bestie-bro Alex had purchased his first road bike, avidly trying to convince me to take up ‘outdoor’ cycling. It only took over a year of repeated messages before I finally gave in – my first Trek road bike was a heavy, gray, aluminum eyesore – but I loved her anyway. I was 25 at the time and my typical loop was a 23-mile route from Woodland Hills through some lower-level Malibu mountains. Riding outdoors was way harder than indoor spinning – what was I thinking?

The Trek bike stayed around but the indoor cycling studio and gym, was soon sold. Through my venture capital firm, I continued to invest in amazing companies like Alter-G (later merged with ReWalk) and GameReady (later acquired by Avanos Medical), which revolutionized sports rehabilitation for athletes and those with medical conditions – my first real deep dive into sports science, technology and injury rehab. We also invested in several food & nutrition businesses, one which went public, ever so much increasing my interest in food and it’s impact on life and performance.

When I met Kristi in 2005, my hair was way too short and you might have thought my life’s ambition was to end up on the cover of Men’s Health magazine – trust me, it wasn’t – I just loved going to the gym and was definitely looking it. Being fit and all, the farthest I had ever run was still just about 3 miles, and my cycling had never gone beyond 35+ miles – and I am the first to admit it, I wasn’t even going very fast. As it usually is when you meet the love of your life, other things become less urgent. In 2006, I took the bike out just a few times, went surfing even less than that, the Wednesday Feel Good Days were all but gone, and the wine, cheese and Sushi consumption was on a rapid upward trend. Married just a year later, things were happening at rapid pace back then. As one of the most talented cancer surgeons out there, it also didn’t take long for us to realize that Kristi’s talents and my entrepreneurial skills were a fantastic match. We sketched out the idea for the first non-hospital-owned breast cancer center in the U.S. where screening diagnosis, imaging, surgery and genetics all could happen under one roof, significantly faster and more optimized than at any competing hospital or center. In late 2008, the lease to the 8,000 sqf Beverly Hills-based center was signed – things were going to be great!

I was so excited to hear the words “I’m pregnant” at dinner in Santa Monica just a few weeks later that I almost knocked over my glass of wine. We really wanted a family and the first Ultrasound appointment just couldn’t come soon enough. We were finally going to have a baby – little did we know, there were 3 little dudes in there and they would rock our world. The Beverly Hills lease was already signed, so the plans for the cancer center continued, and in March 2009, the doors to the Pink Lotus Breast Center opened up – and yes, that was the same month the worldwide financial markets collapsed due to the housing crisis. The timing was incredible: a self-funded startup, a worldwide financial crisis, and triplet boys in the belly. We needed help, more space, more capital, more staff , more everything – none of which was easy to obtain.

In 2010, a year into our triplet adventure, I noticed something I hadn’t in over a decade: My activity level was again at 0. I was working nonstop when I wasn’t taking care of the kids or trying to catch up on sleep, and my weight was coming back – slowly, but surely. Ahhh that’s just how it goes I told myself, and ignored the problem. Meanwhile, my entrepreneurial buddy Sean knew I had been investing into the health space and kept on telling me about this Ironman triathlon thing – I had no clue what he was talking about, which crazy person wants to do 3 sports? I was living a life of non-stop action, had no time, and loved listening to Muse. And therein was the simple solution to my current weight problem. How? I promised to give myself 5 minutes and 3 seconds every day – not more, not less – to run as hard as I could to my favorite song, Uprising.

And so I laced up, grabbed my iPod (RIP) and every day, I ran as hard as I could until the song stopped. I was so out of shape, or maybe I was just a terrible runner, that I often would still sweat 20 minutes after the workout was done. But that didn’t matter, I was getting the job done. Every day I got a few feet farther down the street, and less than half a year into this daily 5-minute “Uprising”, I went from running a 9-min pace to just over a 5-min mile. 5 minutes was all the time I had to give back then, but I utilized 100% of it.

Things didn’t slow down in 2011, but with some additional help and staff, I didn’t have to work 16 hours a day, and 12 hours seemed to do the trick (makes you think twice about opening your own business). My buddy Sean kept on telling me about Ironman – I kept on ignoring it – triathletes wear weird clothes! My interest in sports science did not disappear though, and I had just purchased the official U.S. Navy Seal Guide to Fitness and Nutrition. I previously worked out almost daily with a member of the military in the gym and was intrigued by how Seals, the toughest soldiers in the world, did their training. As I was reading the training manual, put together by multiple physicians and PhD’s, I couldn’t help but notice how Seals must be incredibly good long-distance runners and swimmers – and then, I knew I already liked cycling. Hold on a minute! Swim, Bike, Run? Could it be possible?

I opened YouTube (subscribe to the Ho’Omau channel), back when having 1K likes on a video was a huge deal, and typed in Ironman triathlon (sorry, Tony Stark). I couldn’t unsee the men and women struggling through the lava fields in Kona doing absolutely superhuman things. I tried to forget about it, but I couldn’t. Sean was right all along – this was epic! I knew how to run 3 miles, bike 35 miles and could run a pretty fast mile now (thanks Muse) – but a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile marathon? I hadn’t been in a lap pool since I was 8 years old.

I could not stay away from the few YouTube videos out there – they had captured my very essence and I kept re-watching them. A small creature with a gigantic bullhorn was hiding in my ear, telling me nonstop to “SIGN UP ALREADY”. So on February 13, 2011, I committed and went on my first training run, followed by a 2 mile run, then 7 miles, then 11 miles and soon my first dip back into the lap pool right where Gerry Rodrigues from Tower 26 was coaching ‘much’ faster swimmers than I was at the time. I also bought a CompuTrainer (a what?) and did my first FTP test. 186 watts, amazing! My short 5-min runs gave me a decent foundation on which to build upon, and by March my training was in full swing. The clip-on aerobars on my road bike (sigh), which had been upgraded to the lowest-budget version of a Trek Madone, made me feel just enough like a triathlete, and soon I was signed up for Ironman Cozumel to take place in late November – I had 9 months to get my act together. I ran my first marathon in June, followed by my first 10K in July, my first trail race in August, and my first half marathon in October. Still very much consumed by our business and triplet toddlers, I had about 6-7 hours a week to train – not much at all, so I made sure every minute counted, just like every second counted during my 5-minute mile runs. On November 27, 2011, I crossed the Ironman Cozumel finish line in a time of 10:46:37 – I was 35 years young back then and it was goin go change the way I looked at life.

I advanced quickly in 2012, mostly because I wasn’t overreaching or overtraining like so many athletes around me. Training hours stayed quite low for me around 6-7 hours a week, but I made every session count. It’s quite hard to log any Zone 2 training with such a strategy, but Kristi and I had started to pull the triplets in trailers along the bike path in Santa Monica over the weekends, and it became a weekly thing for many years, often logging 25-40 miles per weekend. And despite being on my cruiser bike, with 2 little dudes in a trailer behind me, these rides put me perfectly into Zone 2. Problem solved! I raced 19 times in 2012 and l just loved it – they even let me hold the real Giro d’Italia trophy after I won the KOM in a gran fondo.

2013 was quickly shaping up to be the best year ever. It sure seemed the cancer center was growing as quickly as my endurance. I had been on the front page of newspapers and featured in magazines before as an entrepreneur, but this year was going to go way beyond that. Angelina Jolie had just announced her double mastectomy (which was performed by Kristi at our center), Kristi was named LA Woman of the Year, we were getting worldwide media attention with front page coverage in countries I hadn’t even heard of, not to mention being subjected to countless interviews, dangerous photoshoots and other highly unsafe situations (I’m looking at you, Tomo!). All joking aside, we had built this business up from scratch during the most challenging of times, it was nice to see a reward for once. That year, I raced 11 times, podiumed two 50K trail races, came in 72nd overall at Ironman Los Cabos, came close to breaking 3 hours in the marathon, ran a new 13.1 best in 1:26, and broke 10 hours at Ironman Canada on one of the most challenging courses out there – finally joining the sub-10 club (take the Sub-10 Challenge) and coming in 76th just 1:15 hours behind the winner. And to my disbelief, I loved running! In a few months, I would go back to Cozumel, finish sub-9:30 and race World Championships in 2014. Just 2 years into my Ironman journey, nothing could stop me.

The constant State Farm commercials with Chris Paul were starting to annoy me as I was sitting in our living room lounge chair nonstop for the second straight week in a row, watching mostly basketball as the season had just started and the Clippers were actually more fun to watch than the Lakers. My body was still hurting like hell. Besides the bruises and missing skin, the muscular tears inside my body that you couldn’t see were the real issue. Multiple muscle, ligament and tendon tears, 4 in the left hamstring alone, more in the lower leg, several Grade 3 tears with partial separation and almost full separation from the bone in my left leg. Just walking to the restroom 20 feet away, I almost passed out on multiple occasions. The pain was so extreme, it was not until months later that I realized I had also broken my hand. The hand wasn’t even on my brain’s radar at the time. The accident happened quickly, and I had no idea it would keep me from performing like this again for 10 more years.

Even with just a half decent performance in Cozumel, just two weeks away, I would earn the #1 spot in Ironman’s new All World Athlete program for the United States – that sounded like something I wanted, but I could barely walk. Every day that passed, I re-evaluated how I felt. I was able to use my right leg on the bike to create fairly decent power while my left leg was mostly coasting. Swimming was no problem as I didn’t have to use my legs at all. Could I be able to finish Ironman Cozumel in the broken state I was in? In the end, I decided that all the hard work I put into my season would not go down in vain, and hopefully my three boys would later look at this and see that sometimes, you just have to finish up what you started – even if it’s incredibly hard.

I finished Ironman Cozumel in just under 12 hours, but limping the marathon course in a time of 5 hours and 23 minutes – my left leg was absolutely useless and would take close to another year to fully heal. It was an emotional finish for me. Was it crazy? Yes, and I knew that in advance. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I earned the #5 spot in the U.S. for the 35-39 age group that year instead of #1, but more importantly, I felt I had completed my goal and that made up for much of the pain I had to endure. Thank you Molly Lavik for detailing my journey to Cozumel in your book Going Supernova: The Bold Paths of 101 Superachievers.

While my body was broken and I was trying to regain my strength, I continued to run with our German AuPair, Jacqueline, slower so that I could handle it. We had started running together in 2013, and Jacqueline had finished her first 10K in July and her first 13.1 in November, a week before my bike crash. Now in 2014, it was time for her first marathon – she was just 19 at the time. I lasted 25 miles with my bad leg before I had to stop pacing her, and she finished the 26.2 strong in 4:26 minutes – and that was my all out effort that year given my injury. It was the only day I came close to “racing” in 2014. For the rest of the year, I tried to regain my strength and would frequently run with Kristi at 9 or 10-min mile paces, barely keeping up with her, sweating like an animal and finishing utterly exhausted. The road to recovery was brutal. My spirit was crushed, and I assumed it was all over.

I was running up my local trail loop – Temescal Canyon in beautiful Pacific Palisades. I had done it so many countless times before, I knew precisely what my PR’s were at any given point of the loop. It was a gorgeous sunny Thursday in early 2015 – my accident now almost 16 months in the past. I looked at my Garmin and couldn’t believe it – I just made my first checkpoint up Temescal right at my PR time – I was on fire and knew it. 11 miles later, I sat down in front of the house with a huge smile and sigh of relief, I was back baby, I was finally back! Jacqueline was also visiting us from Germany that month, everything felt right again – the nightmare was finally over!

“Can you tell us once more exactly where you were and what you ate that day” asked the person on the phone. This was probably the 20th call from the State, City and LA County Health Department and various others interested in the matter. What they all wanted to know is what led to one of the largest Acute Salmonella Poisoning outbreaks in Los Angeles in recent history – and it all started with me – patient 0. After finishing that run with that big smile, I wouldn’t smile again for 9 straight days. As luck had it, I ate Sushi after my trail run that gave me a very unique, hard to detect and aggressive strain of salmonella, and it would soon spread around the city as others ate Sushi that came from the same fish. First misdiagnosed as Ulcerative Colitis, none of the medications worked, because well, I didn’t have Ulcerative Colitis. The cramping, sweating and pain were so severe, my bike crash seemed like a walk in the park in comparison. I knew I was going to die soon if I didn’t go to the hospital, and so I did, because again, you only get lucky so often. In total, I was bedridden for 9 days and lost 15 lbs. But worse, it took 5 more weeks for me to feel normal again. I had lost all of the gains I had worked for so hard in 2014. It was like my accident had just happened. I was more frustrated than ever before in my life. I loved running so much, and I couldn’t run.

Thankfully our boys didn’t realize how tough this period was for me, and they were inspired by all the usual activities in and outside the house. Up until this point, Kristi and I had still been riding the boys in trailers along the beach. All in all, we pulled them over 4,000 miles over those years, more than enough to cross the entire United States – what a blessing it is to be a child. Sebastian, aka Basti, soon took an interest in cycling, and before the year was over, the boys did their first mini triathlon. 10 laps in a backyard pool, then straight into T1, a short loop around the neighborhood block on the “race bike”, and a run down the street with Kristi providing much-needed aid station support. It was epic fun! Yet, I had reached a breaking point and my passion for running was declining with the continuous setbacks and struggles, so I adapted and shifted my attention away from the negative and focused on what I could do well – ride my bike.

I raced my bike 5 times in 2015, 3x 100 milers and 2x 200 milers. 2x 1st place finishes, 1x 2nd place finish, and 1x age group win. My spirit was renewed! While attending church one late summer day that year, the small man with the big bullhorn was once again yelling in my ear: Use the bike, do something massive! Do something massive? What does that even mean? Well I had it figured out within a few hours. Vegas In 24 was born, a nonstop, non-draft, unassisted bike ride from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, using the extremely difficult 365-mile mountainous route with 14.8K of climbing, straight through the desert, and all of it in less than 24 hours. I gave myself 4 months to train (you’re joking, right?), with the event scheduled for April 23, 2016.

I showed up for another 200 miler in early 2016 to test how my training was coming along – part of the race going through the Joshua Tree area, the same territory I’d have to cross on my way to Vegas. I won and set a new course record – my 3rd back-to-back win at the 200 mile distance. Vegas In 24 was 2 months away and my 4-month training plan, the first plan I ever developed on my own, was being executed flawlessly. Zwift had just been introduced (make sure to join our Zwift Club), and I was training indoors more than ever before.

VegasIn24 was a beast. The distance, the climbing, and insane winds (20-40 mph) that did not die down all day – forcing me to ride at an angle for countless hours – all of it unassisted and without drafting and 70%+ of the event occurring in the desert. Things went almost flawlessly except one small mishap, but I finished in 20:41:25 hours, the world’s fastest known time to this day, not bad for a 39-year old. And once again, I found myself all over the media with more people tweeting and writing about the event than I could keep track of – even Garmin sent out a 2-person camera crew to chronicle the whole thing. I loved it! If you have 3 spare minutes (you do because you read this far), check out the event video to get an idea of how gnarly the thing really was. Since then, Ho’Omau took over the Vegas In 24 brand, and it is now an open challenge available to anyone who will dare, with a total of 4 routes to choose from, all ending at the very same Welcome to Las Vegas sign where I once finished.

Shortly after Vegas In 24, I paced Jacqueline to her 2nd-ever marathon, and raced two more 200-milers and won both. When I showed up for an event of that distance, people knew who I was and it was pretty much expected that I was going to come in first. I’m not much of an ego guy, but that part was pretty fun. We only had one problem: I loved triathlon even more than cycling and hadn’t raced an Ironman in 3 years.

If some of the pain from my accident will never go away, then what was I waiting for? I knew what it was – the fear of disappointment, and having another setback after giving it my all. I also had much less time to train these days. Our business went through a gigantic crisis – long story – and we had to downsize, re-evaluate and restructure things. This took time – in fact, it took countless years and the majority of the burden fell on me. In 2017, leading up to my first Ironman in about 4 years, I trained 6-7 hours a week, less than desirable. I finished Ironman Santa Rosa, a new race on the circuit back then, in just over 11 hours. I wasn’t disappointed by the 11 hour finish – it had been 4 years and neither my swim nor my run were anywhere near their potential. I tried my luck once more in Cabo, where I previously came in 72nd overall, but I just wasn’t ready for prime time anymore. I was 41 now, was I simply too old? I didn’t think so.

Other than the mind-numbing work hours that year, there were some positives of course. The boys had long been out of the trailer and crushing their own 2-wheelers now and getting good at it! Kristi started writing her soon-to-be bestselling book, a game-changer in women’s health that also lead the entire family to go 100% plant-based (something I should have done ages ago – remember my interest in nutrition?). Kristi also finished her first Ironman 70.3 in Oceanside (way to go!) while the boys were cheering us on, but more importantly, crushing the Ironkids run, making buds with Mike Reilly and hanging out with Fireman Rob. They even met with Peter Sagan at the Tour of California that year, how do these kids do it? Must be good to be a triplet!

Kristi’s bestselling book finally hit the shelves in 2018, Jacqueline was visiting again, and I was dipping back into 10-hour racing territory at Ironman Maryland that year – but sadly that’s as far as the memories go for that year, and this theme continued further into 2019. The boys seemed to advance faster than the eye could see while my endurance stayed stagnant. Basti rode his first 100 miles on the indoor trainer that year, and Justin decided out of the blue to walk his first marathon on the treadmill – butt naked. They were just 9 years old. Later that year, I reached a point where I just had enough of the lack of progress. Work-Life-Train balance was possible – I already knew this – so I took some time to rethink things to align 2020 for success. I changed my schedule and training habits, and hit the ground running.

Rather than win bike races, I switched my focus back specifically to my weakness, running. I was patient, and the speed and distance slowly came back. A few months later, I toed the line to the LA Marathon with my bro Alex – he had flown in from Germany for a visit and a ‘long’ run, as he himself had also gotten the endurance bug (sorry dude, my fault). It was not a PR race by any stretch, but once again I had that incredible feeling I had when I was sitting in front of the house with that big smile, I felt like I was back and ready to kick butt! 2020 here we come, it can only get better from here, right? Alex made it on the last Lufthansa flight out of the U.S. before everything was shut down the following week. You were there for it, you experienced it, there is no point to even write about it. Covid was awful for anyone who loves to be active, and then everyone else.

After two years of what seemed like a lot of nothing, things picked back up fast in 2022, because what better way to let go of all the virus frustration than to sign up for a million races! Our son Sebastian had also gotten quite strong on the bike by now – he was 12 when he nailed his first California State Champion title in road cycling, and he did it again in 2023 and 2024, three’s a charm, right? We raced together a lot, and Basti became the youngest rider to tackle some of Southern California’s most brutal centuries: Tour de Big Bear, Mullholland Challenge, Mt. Laguna Classic, Heartbreak Hundred, all 100+ milers with insane climbing. Once again after many years, people were recognizing me at races, and it was fun just like in the “old days”. And this time, it wasn’t me, it was ‘us’: “Look, it’s the Funks!” Even though Basti was reluctant to be instructed or coached by me – because Dads can’t be right about anything, especially with my background and credentials – but I had great fun racing with him nonetheless, even pulling him through two 200-milers when he was just 13 years old. Wow! Remember how I was smoking, drinking and riding my moped at that age, barely able to run 1km? Basti, you’re amazing!

2022 gave me the foundation to get back to my potential and in 2023, I did so with a vengeance. I embraced the Ho’Omau never-give-up spirit more than ever before and was not going to look back. The 10-year curse following my bike crash had been lifted, and between these two years, I raced 27 times: 6x Ironmans, 4x 70.3’s, tons of cycling – I even raced BWR and Unbound (including a temporary mustache addition of course) with a newfound affection for gravel biking. The most fun though, was to race the Ironman World Championship in Nice, France while having the opportunity to see most of my European family again after too many years, and then crossing the border to race Ironman Italy just 6 days later – with my brother Alex. It was his 2nd Ironman, but our very first triathlon together, and my very first back-to-back Ironman – because, why stuff like that is just too cool! Jacqueline also continued on her endurance journey and completed her 1st Olympic distance triathlon that year – way to go!

So here we are, 100+ races later, 5x 1st Place, 9x Overall Podium Finishes, 15x Age Group 1st Place, 20x Age Group Podium Finishes amidst all the setbacks and long road back to peak performance – and I still love it as much as the very first time I crossed a finish line. And while it took a whole cup of Kona coffee to read all of this (or maybe you refilled?), it’s still just a very abbreviated version, all considered. I started Ho’Omau Endurance Co. because of the incredible amount of things I discovered over the past 13 years learning, planning, testing, training, racing, healing, and connecting with others in this field – all of which is layered on top of the experiences I had (and continue to gather) as a health nut, entrepreneur and investor in food and sports ventures. Of course I am quite proud of my numerous coaching certifications and specializations, and they certainly taught me a lot. but they could not replace the real-life experiences I have had in these sports and the passion I still hold for them today.

I wish Ho’Omau had existed back in 2011 when I first started out – it would have made me stronger, smarter and yes, faster, so much is for sure.

If all you take away from my story is one thing, let it be this: If you are overweight, if you don’t exercise at all, if you smoke a pack a day, if you can’t even run a mile, if you eat junk food all the time, if you are injured, if you drank your heart out and partied when you were younger (or still do today), if your kids’ schedule drives you crazy (triplets, anyone?), or are too busy running a business – I hear you LOUD AND CLEAR! But – if you embrace the Ho’Omau spirit, none of these things mean that you cannot be healthy, athletic, even pretty fit, or maybe even super crazy fit. You decide!

If you don’t know where to start, or if you need any help in your endurance quest or journey you will find an incredible amount of help and assistance here at Ho’Omau.

If you’d like to drop me a line for whatever reason, feel free to use the form below.

Mahalo for reading!