Last June I signed up for my first (and probably only) Ironman competition – Ironman C'oeur d'Alene, which will be run on June 24, 2012. For years I've had no interest in trying an Ironman. The race is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 miles on the bike, and a 26.2 mile run. I've never swam, biked, or run any of those distances. Two years ago I completed two half-Ironmans and that probably was the half-step I needed to at least start thinking about what it would be like to complete an Ironman. But mostly what I thought was that it would be hell and I wasn't interested.
But last year several of the people I trained with completed Ironmen. I tracked their progress on-line and cheered their success . And surprisingly, when Craig Strong, who heads up Precision Multisport, announced plans for a group effort to train for CDA in 2012, I decided to go for it. I guess I figured if I was going to do that distance, it would be best to try it while I'm still young. Right?
A writer friend of mine insisted that I should write a book about training and competing. She recommended I keep a record of my daily training. So even though I'm technically in the "offseason" I started in September to keep a blog The Road to C'oeur d'Alene of my workouts. It's not really very interesting, but it will be helpful later if I do write a book or story about the race preparation.
So far in the eight weeks that I've been logging the workouts I've trained about 7 to 9 hours per week. Light workouts, not much intensity. When we get into serious training mode, we will average more like 14 hours a week and the workouts will be more intense.
It will all be over in another 225 days.
