And so it begins..

The quest for an IM finish # 2 “officially” began on December 25. Merry Christmas to me! However, you know that basement I wrote about a few posts ago? Well….still not finished. It’s almost finished but I’m not quite there yet. I can see the end so I’m bumping training up the list as the top priority this week and going forward. The kids are happy with what they see so far so I’m almost out of the woods.

I didn’t hit all my workouts last week, which I’m not happy about, so I will take a shot at them again this week. The New Year has brought about new vigor but it should be a challenging week nonetheless. I’ll be preparing for a 3 day overnight sales conference that starts next week, my oldest daughter has 5 swim meets, the youngest daughter has basketball practice and a game on Saturday and we need to find a second car as I turned in mine last week when the lease ended. Oh, and did I mention the basement? Sounds like a lot of whining I know. But isn’t that what blogging is about? So I can whine a little in the comfort of my own blog?

Actually, there is a good point to be made and one that I’ve made before. I’m only a one Ironman veteran here but I feel I can speak about this with experience and knowledge. The point is this: No matter what training plans you have carefully laid out for Ironman or a Half-Ironman, Life gets in the way. Last year at this time I would have stressed out about missing workouts but this year experience can helps to alleviate that. In fact at this time last year, I was unable to run as I was going through physical therapy for my runner’s knee. I didn’t start running until mid-February and I was concerned that I wouldn’t get in enough running. But it worked out in the end. I was able to get up to the training time required without over doing it (the sure way to another bout of runner’s knee).

Lake Placid is 200 days away and there is still plenty of time to get on track with training. But I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that you take the relaxed approach for too long, especially if it’s your first IM, because at some point your performance will suffer. You will suffer. You cannot “wing” Ironman although I do know a few who kind of did, finished, and paid for it. That’s just not my style.

The alarm went off this morning at 5:30 AM and I made the Masters class at my Y. It was hard. Oh, so hard!! But I’m happy I got there.