When we thought about creating this blog, we thought about a title that would represent our passion, and what we stand for in life. Needless to say, triathlon is part of our lives, we both have tattooed this tri passion, and this isn’t a secret to anyone. However,triathlon is just ONE of the things we endure, and let’s be honest, we all endure and go throughout challenges almost every day, which although sometimes hard, make us stronger, and defines who we really are.

Let’s go to the definition of Endurance. Endurance is “The ability or strength to continue despite fatigue, stress or other adverse conditions”. Having that in mind, we meant to include every single aspect of life where we experienced a situation that demanded this ability of keep going, keep trying until we could get, or overcome what we wanted/needed to. Endurance is never giving up, is overcoming challenging situations for a bigger purpose, is never forgetting the purpose despite contrary opinions, facts, or believes.

We believe that you can be or do whatever you want if you stay truthful with your goals, if you never give up, if you work hard for it, if you try as many times you need to reach that. We consider ourselves an example of this perseverance, and here you have a few reasons why:

– Since really young age both of us decided we didn’t want to depend 100% on our parents, and we wanted to make our own money (for different circumstances), and we were really independent!

– We always believed sports had a special place in our hearts, and although different career paths, we never stopped practicing, and at some point we both made a living of sports (as athletes, coach, sports business).

– When we met, we used to live 18 hours drive away from each other, still, we would see each other every 2 months, and our love just grew from day 1.

– We were born in Brazil and there they have a saying like this: ” I am Brazilian, and I never give up”, which pretty much means that Brazilians never let a difficult situation stop them to keep chasing their dreams.

– We moved to United of States a few years ago, with NOTHING, and no family members around. We learned about West Palm Beach goggling. We both had to start from scratch, in a different country, different language, much different culture, and nobody around to “help us out”. We had our struggles, however, we made it, and today we live the life we always dreamed about.

And last, but not least, we both like long lasting races/training. Richard is a well known 15 times finisher Ironman athlete, isn’t a secret to anyone that he LOVES what he does, from coaching to training and racing. Carol, rediscovered her passion for going long when she started training for her first marathon, and now, training for Ironman, she loves when coach Rich says, long and SLOW! Haha

Endurance is really complex, and be an Endurance Couple means that throughout challenges and steps, we will always move forward having always our eyes in our goal. Nothing will stop us, our dreams are real, our reasons are truthful and honest and our intentions are genuine.

Pictures:  Our “tri tattoos” – we have the same one, and Rich has an additional M-dot (that Carol may get it after she finishes her first Ironman). Below, Rich finishing his second Ironman, totally dehydrated, as you can see by his black shorts that became white. And Carol, suffering under a 100 degrees weather, without her bike shoes (wearing regular sneakers), and going until the finish.

Which kind of situation life had presented to you that you had to endure no matter what???