2012 - And so it begins

January 2nd.

I guess the "off season" is officially over. It is now time to face the reality of what I've done, signing up for a full Ironman. Eeek!

After playing around with various training plans that I found on the Internet, I decided that I would be more comfortable having a live someone tell me what to do. It just seemed too easy to edit those plans to what I wanted to do instead of what I needed to do. I had another conversation with Duston last week and we lined out our expectations of each other and some key races that I should put on the calendar.

KC Triathlon - May 20. He suggested the Olympic distance, but since I'm a little leery of the swim that early in the season, he okayed the sprint distance. The Redman swim blew my confidence a bit. I think that May 20 may be a little early for a 1500 meter swim in a cold, choppy lake. Of course, now that this race has been included as part of the WTC 5150 series, I kind of wanted to do the Oly. But, I am going to err on the conservative side on this one. I don't want another DNF for my first race of the season.

KS 70.3 - June 10. I am not terribly excited about doing this race. I don't really have a reason except, I just didn't want to do it. But, it makes sense. It's a good training race as well as it's the right distance out from LV. Ugh. I need to sign up for it before the entry goes up again on January 10th. I just need to keep in mind that I'm doing it for experience and that it is NOT my "A" race.

Summer Roundup Oly - June 24. This race was my very first triathlon in 2009. It consisted of a 250-yard pool swim, 15-mile bike and 5K run. I did it again in 2011, where it was moved to Joplin from Carthage and the pool swim expanded to 500 meters (bigger pool). I was coming off my Topeka Tinman disaster so it was a nice redemption that I won my age group there. For 2012, they are moving it to a lake near Jasper and adding an Oly.

Then, I was silly enough to mention the Eurekan to Duston. It is two weeks out from Louisville and I thought it might make sense to do the 58-mile bike ride there. I did the full event (short sprint tri, century bike ride, 10K run) in 2011, and I thought that the century ride was the hardest thing I had ever done physically. He seems to think that doing the full event again (two weeks before LV) is a good idea....but, I may challenge him. That event sapped me last year. I don't know that I want to put out that much of an effort two weeks before the new biggest event of my life...

That takes care of the multisport races. Throw in Big Sur marathon and Hospital Hill Half Marathon to round out the roster and we'll call it done. Except for the Austin 70.3 cooldown half in October. :)

I have got A LOT of work to do. Again, I have one word for it. EEEK!

I downloaded my totals for 2011. It's pretty awesome, for me. 1,500 miles on my bike? What is most astounding is the 91 miles I put in swimming! That's almost incomprehensible. Wow. Plus the fact that I only missed two complete weeks all of last year when I didn't swim at all. Whoa. I've come a long way, baby.