39 days AI(after Ironman)

I wasn't sure if I'd ever get back to this blog again or not, or start up a new one. Well, I'm going to keep this one going. I figure I'll still talk about current, future training and new races that come up. First off, post ironman thoughts...It's been a really strange month for me. I started training for that race just about a year ago. So between the time of January and November of this past year, my thoughts were really focused on the Ironman. Every training session was done thinking about how I was going to go about that race. Everything I ate, did, etc. My life was getting ready for that race. Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was over.
The days since have been weird. I actually had a hard time removing the countdown clock from my phone, but fortunately I didn't have to remove it so much as change it to an even more exciting event...the birth of my son. In the time since my race I first took about 2-3 weeks off from exercise completely. That really felt great, but I did start itching to do something pretty quickly. I thought the idea of training would make me sick after that but it was the opposite. I actually started to miss it. I did a few short runs, but no cycling. The weather hasn't been great, plus, cycling tends to be more involved and take more time. I haven't swam yet either. Part of that was because of my awesome new tattoo :)

So what I have done was started P90X last week. I figured since tri season doesn't start till April I was going to try and get through the full session. I know strength is one of my biggest deficiencies so this will definitely help. Then I get back into the full swing of tri training. At this point I'm 11 days in. This is the second farthest I've made it! Once I made it three weeks so we'll see how it goes. I'm at least past the soreness. The first week was absolutely brutal. Everything hurt and it even hurt to sleep. Now at least I struggle through the workouts but I feel fine the next day. It's giving me more encouragement that I'll be able to keep going.

As far as the coming tri season. I'm really excited about it! I got permission from my very sweet and understanding wife to go ahead and get a tri specific bike. That's one thing that will really boost my times, plus make it more fun, and well, give me less excuses. I have a tri helmet on the way too, xmas present courtesy of some cash the inlaws gave me for christmas. So my plan for this season is to really work on speed. I spent an entire year training at low heart rates, and had races that pretty much followed that. Very slow, but easy races. This year I want to move up. My goal is to go from a middle of the pack to top of the pack. I believe I can do it. I was sitting in the middle without feeling like I was pushing myself, especially in training. With the new gear, intense strength training, and tri training geared more towards speed I think I can make the move.

I haven't planned out my race schedule yet, since I wanted to look at them with Rachel and see if there were any places she'd like to go. But the definite races are the Clemson Tri in May, Enka Tri in June, Lake Logan Intl in August, Lake Lure Tri in August. I also want to do at least one 1/2 IM towards the end of the season, and maybe a couple destination races, either charleston, hilton head, myrtle or savannah. Anyway, I'm really excited about the coming year.
I plan to write more often on here in the coming weeks, might be slow for a little while though.
Oh and of course a few Ironman pics....