FEATURES

Noah's Journey - Part II...

Tuesday, 16 December 2025 00:10

By Noah Billings

At USAT Nationals in August 2025, I finished the Olympic distance race finishing 10th in my age group. After the race, Nik and I talked about my training goals, wishes, and barriers. I told him that despite how much I love racing, I had to be realistic about resources and my time. Recently I downgraded my training as I was working full time as a delivery driver for an Anheuser/Busch distributor and focusing on earning money. Also, after a full day delivering and stacking beer cases and kegs, I was often too tired to train. Pool access in Rochester, Minnesota is difficult. Nik provided an offer to help with my barriers to training. He proposed that I move to Florida to train with Chris. I could help Chris by providing peer support and encouragement and I could have freedom to train and freedom to recover. Also, there is MUCH more access to swim in the Florida climate.

I remember thinking he was joking at first. Who offers to let you live your dream? After Nik reassured me he was serious, I moved down to Florida.

Moving to FL was a bit of culture shock. In Minnesota, I lived in a rural setting with trees and cows. Now I live in an Orlando suburb. There is much more traffic, the nature is much more manicured. It’s a different setting for sure! I get a lot more opportunities for places to swim, work out and a lot freer time to just chill, do yoga, and enjoy the warmer weather. Swimming across Lucky Lake is a daily local open water swim event I am grateful to have access to several times a week. I am only slightly terrified of alligators, the motto for the swim is “Enter the Food Chain.” I even get to practice swims in the ocean! ...

Living with more people has also been a big change. I went from a home that was quiet with only two other people (my parents). Now I am in a home with 4 people and when we have training camps I’ll stay at a place with up to 10 to 12 people (or more)! It’s been hard to adjust to all the noise at times but it’s also never a dull moment.

Speaking of Chris, training and living with Chris has been a blast! Chris has become anamazing friend. We both can destroy a waffle house breakfast, and we are consistently fine-tuning our trash talking. We have been running together to work at his pace. We are having great success there and having fun.

In addition to Chris, I’ve been able to train with other amazing individuals and make some great friends. Esmee came all the way over from the Netherlands to train with us. Other amazing athletes I get to spend time with include athletes like Robert, Chad, Abigail, Victoria, Frankie, Andrew, Kennet, Andrew, Christian, Marlynne, Shawn, Kyle, and Thomas. My teammates are great motivators.

Another plus I’ve gained since moving down to Florida is I’ve been surrounded by great mentors like Matt Miller, Rhonda Vetare, Christine Conti, Jason Douglas, Daniel Allemond and of course, Nik Nikic. There are so many powerful and caring supporters for our team and our cause. I can nearly always find someone to take me to Waffle House.

One huge mentor I met was Hayes Johnson. He is amazing. I was paired with Hayes Johnson to be my guide for the full ironman. He is a member of Octagon elite and the husband of none other than 5-time Olympic medalist Missy Franklin! He was also a former college swimmer, which reassured me as Ironman Florida was going to be my first race with a big ocean swim. We have done 2 events together, the Chicago Marathon and Ironman FL and I can’t wait to do another event with Hayes, he is so positive and awesome.

This year Team 1% Better had a goal for Ironman Florida to have a large contingent of finishers in the PC/ID (Physically Challenged/Intellectual Disability) category. I was excitedto represent at Ironman Florida....(End of Part II)