My brother has long held the goal of completing an Ironman triathlon, and in only a few hours (at 7 a.m. on Sunday) he’ll begin the final leg of that goal when he starts the 2010 Ironman Lake Placid.

(For those of you unaware of the Ironman, it consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run; it began in Hawaii in 1978 after an argument about which athletes were the most fit, and it continues today as a highly reliable method of determining insanity.)

His Ironman journey began in earnest last July, when we traveled to Lake Placid to watch the 2009 race and to register him for the 2010 race.  (Ironman Lake Placid is so popular that if you don’t sign up in person, you don’t make it.)  While we were watching the race, we noticed many families and friends printed special shirts to show their support for their racers.  We all liked that idea, so we began thinking about ideas for his shirt; by the end of the day, I had an idea.

If you’ve seen my Christmas cards, you know I enjoy taking something widely-recognized and re-appropriating it for a different purpose.  When it comes to widely-recognized, few shirts can top the eye-catching LIVESTRONG shirts offered by the Lance Armstrong Foundation:

It just so happens that not only does my brother’s first name begin with an L, but his last name also begins with an S and ends with a trong, making that shirt perfect for this particular re-appropriation.  Before long, I had the shirt design ready to go:

While at Ironman Lake Placid 2009, we also noticed some families chose to add Bible verses to the back of their shirts.  The LIVESTRONG shirt has no design on the back, but it was important to both my brother and me that we include a verse as a display of our faith.  Most families used one of the same two verses: Isaiah 40:31 or Hebrews 12:1-2.  Those are both superb verses that express important Biblical truth and fit the situation, but they’re also the popular choices.  I didn’t want popular, so I mulled it over a bit and decided to use a verse that expressed important Biblical truth and fit the situation, but in a different way.  The verse I chose was Proverbs 27:17, and the back design makes it clear how it fits the situation: