Ironman

Dear Family, Friends and Colleagues,   Some of you are aware, most likely because you’ve heard me complain about the training, that I will be participating in the first Bahrain International Triathlon on December 6th.  My sister and nephew, used a combination of: family pressure, a sense of national duty and my inability to turn down a challenge to convince me to join them in this Half Ironman.     The event consists of a 1.9km swim, followed by a 90km bike ride and ending with a 21km run.  Frankly, I think anything that requires you to put your body through all of that should not have “Half” in its description!  Given my work and travel schedule and the fact that I hadn’t been on a bike since I was a kid, the training has been “interesting” to say the least.   I decided a month into the training that if I was going to put my body through this torture and my family through  my constant complaints that I should do it for more than just the sense of accomplishment and use the event as an opportunity to raise enough money, with all of your support, to positively impact the lives of those in need.  There are four charities that I have chosen as the recipients of the money we will hopefully raise together.  They are:   Room to Read  www.roomtoread.org Save the Children  www.savethechildren.org Tony Blair Faith Foundation   http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/ Thinkinc Foundation  www.thinkinc.me   Rather than provide a short description of each one of the four charities I decided it would be much more powerful to hear direct from the Founders/CEO.  For full disclosure, Thinkinc is founded by my younger sister.  I could not be more proud of her for establishing and running the first and only school for autistic children in Bahrain.   I hope after reading their letters you will agree with me that they are all very worthy causes and you will be generous in your donations.  I am involved in all four of them so can personally vouch for the great work they all do to make millions of lives better.  As an added incentive, I will match every dollar raised from all of you so please make this a very expensive race for me.  J   Finally, I know it is customary to set different donation levels based on achieving certain feats of endurance but please resist the temptation to do so as my only two goals are to finish the race without injury and to raise as much money as possible.  For those of you who are kind enough to support me in my effort please just reply to myself cc Paula and Candy with the amount you are willing to donate and one of them will then follow-up with you or your assistant after the race to take care of the details.   Thank you and with my warmest regards,   Yusuf Alireza