The Triathlon Challenge That Took Paralympian Mohamed Lahna 3,300 Miles Across America

Precision, pressure, and uncertainty. 

Lahna began his Triathlon Across America on June 13 with a 28.5-mile swim around Manhattan, completing the iconic 20 Bridges Swim in 7 hours, 44 minutes, and 58 seconds. 

The swim had to be carefully timed around the tides, with Lahna given a narrow window to reach certain points along the course. A kayaker, safety boat and observers accompanied him, and if he missed the window, there was no way to keep going. He would have to wait up to a week for the next opportunity. 

The swell in the Hudson River was enough to leave Lahna seasick, and for the first three hours of the swim, he was vomiting while continuing to move forward. He had little left in his stomach, but stopping wasn't an option.  

“It was very stressful for me, the swim,” Lahna said. “You have one shot. If you miss it, you can't start again the next day.” 

He didn't miss it. After nearly eight hours in the water, Lahna completed the first leg of his journey. 

Where the scale of the challenge became apparent. 

From Manhattan, Lahna turned west. The next 3,000 miles would take him across some of the most varied terrain in the country. Mountains, farmland, highways, storms, wind, and endless stretches of road. 

Unlike the swim, where the challenge was condensed into one day, the bike presented a different kind of test: the accumulation of fatigue that comes with doing the same thing every day. 

Long days left little room for recovery. Lahna would ride for hours, sometimes finishing around 8 p.m., then eat, recover, sleep and wake up around 6 a.m. to do it all again. Every day meant packing and unpacking.  

There were plenty of moments that demanded something extra from him. Days of cycling with more than 1,000 feet in elevation. Four straight days of relentless Kansas winds made cycling with one leg even more taxing, forcing Lahna to rely heavily on his upper body and hands. He navigated traffic and stretches of highways where fast-moving vehicles added another layer of stress. In Colorado, smoke from wildfires drifted toward the route. Some days were physically difficult; others simply felt endless. 

Then there was the mental weight of the map. 

“Two weeks in, I was looking at Google Maps and at the blue dot for my location,” Lahna said. “And I'm far away from Las Vegas. Like, this is going to be hard.” 

But no one crosses America alone. 

Ryan Goldman was a key part of the bike leg, volunteering to ride alongside Lahna after hearing about the project over a year ago. The two had gotten to know each other through the CAF community in San Francisco, but they had never spent more than a few hours together at a time. Suddenly, they were spending weeks side by side on the road. 

“Can I come with you? I will do it with you,” Goldman told him. 

A cyclist himself, Goldman helped Lahna manage the physical demands of the ride, including taking turns blocking the wind, while also helping with fundraising to support the expedition. For Lahna, the riding partner quickly became much more. 

“He was like an angel with me the whole time,” Lahna said. 

Behind them was Marty Beene, driving the support vehicle and helping keep the pair safe on the road. His job was often invisible, but no less important. He protected Lahna and Goldman from traffic, managed the support vehicle and kept moving with them day after day. 

At the center of the entire operation was Lahna's family. His wife, Ru Chen, managed the logistics of the expedition for two years beforehand, then traveled in an RV during the challenge with their three children. Friends helped with fundraising. And along the way, strangers repeatedly stopped to offer food, water and encouragement. 

The further Lahna traveled, the more the journey became a collective effort. While one person could be seen crossing the country, there was an entire community moving with him. 

Still, there was no shortcut through the miles. The bike had to be ridden one day at a time, and eventually Lahna reached Las Vegas.

You don’t run it all at once. You run it two miles at a time. 

“Each discipline has its own challenges…but if I wanted to compare swim, bike, run, I would say the run was the hardest,” he said. 

The 300-mile route included over 100 miles of dirt and off-road terrain through the desert, where a heat wave, humidity and an unforgiving landscape turned every mile into a negotiation. 

By day three, sweat started to build up inside his prosthesis, creating friction, leading to blisters and boils. At times, Lahna had to use crutches to keep moving. The physical pain was unavoidable. The key was finding a way to keep it from becoming overwhelming. 

Instead of thinking about the 300 miles ahead of him, Lahna decided to focus on the next two. 

His support vehicle and team would meet him every two miles with cold water, nutrition, hydration, and everything he needed to manage his body and prosthesis. He would make it to the truck, stop, reset, and start again. 

“Just think about the next two miles,” he said. 

There were long stretches where the road seemed to disappear into the horizon. After weeks of swimming and cycling across the country, Lahna was already carrying an enormous amount of fatigue. 

At one point, on a particularly difficult stretch of the route, he didn't want to move forward, but Ru reminded him why he was there. 

“Think about the kids who could benefit from this. Think about the lives that might be changed,” she told him 

So, he kept going. Two miles. Then another two. Then another. 

And in many ways, that became the philosophy of the entire journey. 

You don't cross America all at once. You cross it one stretch at a time. For Lahna, the next two miles represented a finish line close enough to reach. Beyond those two miles was another two. 

And behind every mile was the reason he had started in the first place: the opportunity to give back to the organizations that had helped shape his own life and to help create opportunities for children who may not otherwise have them. 

By the time the desert gave way to Los Angeles, Lahna had endured blisters, heat exhaustion and moments when his body simply didn't want to cooperate. 

But he kept moving. Two miles at a time. 

At long last, Lahna was finally in Los Angeles. Or at least, he thought he was. 

As Lahna made his way through Cajon Pass, he had the feeling that the finish was finally within reach. He had spent weeks moving west, and now he was in L.A.  

But he still had 80 miles to go. 

The realization was deflating. After everything he had already endured, it was just another reminder that the final miles would have to be earned like all the others. 

Eventually, the landscape began to change. Sand turned to pavement, and the miles began to feel different. Lahna even decided to tackle part of the final stretch at night, starting at about 6 p.m. and running 11 miles toward the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. 

He finished at the Coliseum — the venue for track and field at the LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Games — then returned the following morning for one final push toward the coast. Then, something happened that Lahna didn't expect. 

“We started around 9 a.m. and then, I just, I had this second gear that I don't know where I was hiding...I just kept going, flying, and I'm just waiting for it...listening to the navigation for the turns and stuff...when it finally said, ‘turn left to Venice Beach Boulevard.'” 

Lahna knew he was there.  

At Venice Beach, friends, CAF supporters and members of the community were waiting. The celebration continued toward Santa Monica Pier, where Bob Babbitt, co-founder of the Challenged Athletes Foundation, took the microphone and helped turn Lahna's arrival into a finish-line celebration worthy of the journey that had brought him there. 

For Lahna, the relief was overwhelming. “It was just so awesome,” he said. “It's just such a relief that it's all over and make it happen.” 

Lahna already knows what it means to stand on a Paralympic podium. With LA28 on the horizon, the next chapter of his career is already taking shape. 

For now, though, his focus isn't on dreaming up the next impossible endurance challenge. It's on finishing what he started. 

Lahna is working to reach his $250,000 fundraising goal for CAF and Save the Children, with more than $171,000 raised as of his arrival in Venice Beach. He will also turn his attention back toward competition, with the 2026 World Triathlon Championship Finals on the horizon and LA28 firmly in his sights. 

The Triathlon Across America may be over, but the purpose behind it isn't.

For all the planning that went into his Triathlon Across America, Lahna never had a guarantee he would make it to Venice Beach. 

He knew he might fail, and he made peace with that before he started. 

His wife and children had planned to travel with him for much of the journey, but Lahna had already considered what would happen if it took longer than expected. If they had to leave, he would continue. If something happened to his running leg, he would use crutches. If circumstances changed, he would adapt. The goal was never to control everything, but to control what he could. 

“I think the main thing that's stopped people from doing something big is fear of failure,” Lahna said. “People are afraid of failure. People are afraid of what other people think of them.” 

For Lahna, the answer was simple: give it everything you have, prepare for what you can, adapt when things go wrong, and don't leave yourself with regrets. 

“If I fail, I don't care,” he said. “I did my best and I tried it.” 

Lahna didn't cross America simply to prove he could. He crossed America because two organizations helped change the trajectory of his own life, and because he believes the next child waiting for an opportunity deserves the chance to discover what they can do, too.