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Stuck in the corporate whirlwind of 14-hour working days and Friday night happy hours, Bermudian Alex Jones, found himself out of shape and out of sorts.

A runner in high school and a triathlete in college, athletics, had taken second string to the demands of a career at one of the world's top investment firms.

But something was missing. The financial rewards may have been plenty, but Jones felt his life was going in the wrong direction.

So he ran. Or rather ran, swam and biked as far away from the 'rat race' as he could.

He quit his job to focus on a different goal of qualifying for the World Ironman Championships in Hawaii - a goal he achieved in March this year.

He talked to James Whittaker about his journey from high school nerd, to corporate lackey to Ironman Hawaii qualifier.

How did you get into triathlon?

It started with my younger brother racing with the local Tri-Hedz group, and me deciding to follow in his footsteps

After doing my first race with tri-hedz and getting a bit addicted, I hooked up with a triathlon group in Florida, where I was at school, and started training, got serious, learned everything I could about the sport, trained as hard as I could and accidentally qualified for the World Short Course Championships in Edmonton.

I'm pretty bad at moderation and when I do decide to do something I tend to read up on it and execute as well as I can.

It became part of what I do. Some people watch television, some people play video games, I train 15 hours a week.

There's always easier options in life. You can watch TV, you can read a book or you can go for a run. I find a lot more satisfaction in going for a run.

How and when did you step up to Ironman?

Triathlon is a long progression. You don't just do an Ironman. You start with a sprint (750m swim, 20k bike, 5k run) - that was the first race that I did in Chicago with Tri-Hedz.

Once you've done that you might try an Olympic distance (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run), which is what I did to qualify for the Worlds. After that Ironman is the next step.

I raced short course through college. But when I left university in '03 and started working, I got out of shape.

In '05 I decided to get fit again and signed up for Ironman Florida.

At the time I was working for a fantastic investment management firm in Bermuda. I was putting in a lot of hours and doing the Friday night drinking routine.

I didn't do anywhere near as well as I wanted to and after a sub-par performance ended up spending the night after the race in the bathroom - without the energy to haul myself back to bed. After the race I went back to the corporate life, working, drinking, and playing the game of romance in the world of professional finance.

By February 2006 I went for a two-mile run and had to stop twice to walk. Clearly I had lost my mojo.

Not long afterward I watched the film Fight Club and that was the final straw.

I saw in myself that I was only five years away from becoming the narrator character Tyler. Complete with my condo and car.

There I was, the youngest employee at one of the best investment firms in the world, if the rat race was my game then I was primed to go out and win.

But I was also alone in my cottage, sitting on my couch, the best relationship in my life was either a woman who would never be my partner or the bottles of wine that made Friday night "happy hour", presumably because the other 163 hours in a week were miserable.

As Tyler Durden (Fight Club) said "That was my life and it was ending one minute at a time..."

Tyler got round his problem by blowing up his condo and developing an irresponsible alter-ego. I went a slightly less drastic route and quit my job to help start a construction business - Holder Home - and train for Ironman Arizona and my last shot at qualifying for Hawaii.

How did that go?

I trained hard, executed well and qualified to compete in Hawaii in October by finishing on the podium of the 18-24 age group.

It was my last year in that age group and the next category up is much more competitive. Realistically it was my last shot to make it and if I hadn't I would probably have quit and got into something else.

I'll have to compete in the higher age group in Hawaii and I'll probably be the slowest. I'm just going to show up and finish, that's the extent of my ambition.

I'll re-evaluate what I do with my life after that.

I'll always be fit. Being out of shape was the worst feeling I can remember but I don't think I'll do Ironman all my life.

Whether it's work or sports, are you an 'all or nothing' type of personality?

Scott Molina (triathlete) said 'moderation is the key to mediocrity'. That's true in everything. If you want to be the best in anything do it to excess - that's true for working, drinking, ironman, triathlon, sex, drugs!

We all have our 'things'. It's just our choice, which we focus on.

What advice has helped you improve the most as a triathlete?

Gordo Byrn, who was a venture capitalist, quit to find his path and became a world-class Ironman said 'focus your goals on the steps that are required to improve, rather than the improvement itself.'

For me this meant that instead of focusing on wanting to do a three and a half hour marathon off the bike, instead the goal here was to focus on what I needed to do to get there. That might be to run every day my coach tells me to and not to work too hard any one day and shell myself (triathlete speak for train so hard that one can't recover to train again the next day, and the next day after that... etc..)

What does it take, in your view, to train to be an Ironman?

An Ironman in its separate components is not about speed.

If you're doing 1:30 seconds per 100m in the water that's pretty good in an Ironman, but nine-year-olds are doing those kind of times at swim training every day.

22mph is pretty fast on the bike but a cyclist could do that every day of the week. As an Ironman if you run seven-minute miles, you're going pretty good, but a decent runner could do it on one leg.

You don't have to be fast. How fast you can run 10k has absolutely no bearing on how fast you'll run a marathon off the bike.

It's about how much training you can absorb rather than how fast you can go or how talented you are.

In high school I was nothing special, I was back of the pack in cross-country teams and I improved by my last year to be bottom of varsity - that's the worst of the good runners.

I didn't improve because I had talent. I just liked running more than everybody else.

What's the hardest part about training for an event like this?

It's the mental fatigue more than anything else.

The last five weeks of training (for Arizona) were particularly tough. I didn't want to go for a run, I didn't want to get in that freezing water in my wet suit and give myself hypothermia. I wanted to stay inside and read a book and drink hot chocolate when it was raining and cold outside. Mental fatigue is a huge issue. Some people can only deal with it for a little while, others seem to be able to do it for years and years.

On your website (www.investmentbiker.com) you pay tribute to the movie Revenge of the Nerds for helping you through high school, can you elaborate?

I was one of those kids who was always picked last in cricket and football. The movie is about the nerdy kid getting revenge, becoming president of the school and getting the hot blonde.

Unfortunately Ironman training and hot blondes are mutually exclusive but after Hawaii I could move on to other things!

It's all tongue in cheek but Revenge of the Nerds gives you hope that high school doesn't matter, your job doesn't matter, your football ability doesn't matter, how much money you have doesn't matter.

I'm still trying to work out exactly what does matter but there are things that can bring you great satisfaction. I've found that crossing the finish line in an ironman, knowing you've just laid it all out, you've just gone 140.6 miles to the absolute limit of your ability, is one of them.

So any idea what's next?

Once I've done Hawaii I don't know, the good thing is you supposedly only get better as you get older. So I've got until I'm about 40 to do all those other lunatic things that I would only contemplate if I had a serious head injury, like Ultraman (6.2 mile (10 K) open ocean swim, a 261.4 mile (421 K) cross-country bike ride, and a 52.4 mile run over two days. That's a real nut-case race. If after my head injury I accidentally made too much money I might also contemplate the cycling Race Across America.[[In-content Ad]]

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