Rx: Ironman

The Beginning...

I know it’s a little late in the season. Ironman Wisconsin is just over three months away, but as I’m heading deeper and deeper into training, I’m realizing that I need another outlet. Steve has been nothing but supportive over the past several months, but I’m pretty sure that he’s getting a little tired of hearing what my training involves today, how my training went today, and what my plan dictates that I do tomorrow. My friends have also been very supportive, but I am often very aware of the fact that my training comes up in every single conversation we have. Even if nobody ever reads this, at least it’s another place to share my hopes, my fears, and my struggle. My hope is that come September 11th, the day after the biggest race of my life, I will be able to look back at this account and realize that it was all worth it.

I suppose I should start with how this all came to be. I was sitting in my house in July of 2003 and just happened to turn on the TV one Sunday. They were airing the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon on TV, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I had done several marathons at this point, but I hadn’t given triathlons much thought. After watching the program, I vowed that I would be there in 2004 to race the Olympic distance race. I signed up a couple of months later and started training. It wasn’t exactly easy. I had never met anyone who had done a triathlon, so I basically learned all I could from books (I have quite the library of tri books by now). Wouldn’t you know…after all that training, my timing chip fell off my ankle during the swim. I managed to screw up my watch’s lap function during T1, so I don’t really have any idea what any of my splits were. My guess is that I finished around 3:30. After that race, I was hooked. I knew that more races were in my future, and for the first time, I thought about Ironman. The plan was to do Lifetime again in 2005, do the Square Lake half IM later that summer, and do IM WI in 2006. I started my rotations for school in late May of 2005, and my first rotation was 1½ hour drive each way. Needless to say, training suffered. A lot. I still did Lifetime’s Olympic distance race, but my times didn’t improve much from the year before. Another 3:30. It didn’t help that it was 105 degrees with humidity, and my run averaged about 12 minutes a mile. The plan to do Square Lake was thwarted by a nasty case of bronchitis that left me unable to even run ½ mile. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You signed up for an Ironman when the farthest tri you’ve ever done was an Olympic distance?! It wasn’t the plan, but I also went straight from the 5K to the Marathon, so I guess this is typical for me. Hopefully the half IM in July will give me a little more practice before September.

Training so far has been going well. Slow, but overall OK. I’m on schedule as far as the amount of training I’m supposed to be doing at this point, but I don’t know that my speed is as fast as I would like to see it. Hopefully with a few more hours…