Thats right Im making the jump back into Ironman racing but with a twist. Due to the amount of time it took to do a full ironman and the general lack of a race within close proximity I have decided (with my primary sponsors consent!) to sign up for Ironman Steelhead 70.3. For those of you not so in the know the 70.3 is a clever way of saying "half Ironman" since a full is 140.6 miles. It will be in Michigan on August 1st and hopefully Rich and Becki will be able to come watch me as well! In fact anyone who wants to come cheer me on and see what all this fuss is about just let me know. I would love to have the support! Hopefully with the distance being shorter it will be a lot easier to accomodate the training required while still attempting to be competitive. My training for IMFL was really focused around being able to go at a comfortable pace for a very very long time. Comfortable in many ways translates to slow. For the Half im going to focus this year on speed. I WANT to get faster. My swim is picking up and in many ways im not so worried about it. The swim for steelhead is in lake michigan with the current and is wetsuit legal. Knowing what I know now about drafting on the swim, how much faster I swim with a wetsuit, annnnnd that I will be swiming with a current makes me think im going to be puting up my fastest swim time of my life! The bike. My initial goal is to be able to do the bike in under 3 hours. Its only 56 miles so if I can maintain something in the low 20's then I will be golden. But wait theres more! The run. This is my biggest worry. How to still have speed for the run. I cant go so hard on the bike that im toast for the run. I want to post a 2 hour half marathon, which means i would be booking it pretty fast. We shall see. Whats likely 45 min swim. 3.5 hour bike 3 hour run. That would put me around 7 hours. I want to go under 6 and would prefer under 5:30. So thats that!
What else -- Oh yeah other races
I might possibly do the miami U tri although I hate how cold it is at that race. Its really just a smidge to early in the year to be racing outside. I have always been cold when I do that race and I really like that race but just dont know. Still on the fence with this one but I better make up my mind as its in about a month
Springboro Y Tri -- w00t w00t so excited for this race as I feel like its in my backyard and will not require me to get up at some awful hour and drag my butt to a race. Thats in may and im really excited for that.
Wright Pat Tuesday duathlon series -- This one is a bit on the fence. I have only been able to work it out to race this once in the past 2 years due to schedule conflicts. There are like 5 or 6 races in the series and I hope to be able to do at least a couple of them.
Wheelie Fun Race Series -- I just found out last night that Bob is trying to put on a little wed. night race series over at ceasars and im so geeked about that! I hope to be able to do whatever he has planned.
So after a bit of a sabatical last year it looks like this year is really shaping up to be a good year of racing for me. Im most excited about the tues / wed night club races. If I can make those work I could race 5-8 times without it really costing much and just for fun which is what its all really about anyway.
Other than that things are going ok. I was sick last week for a couple of days and Lisa has been sick since Sunday so its been a weird week. Work is work and I keep trudging along. But I feel like I have a lot to look forward too with the summer approaching.
Oh before I forget in exactly 1.5 weeks Lisa, Kaiya and me leave for ORLANDO baby!!!! Yes a much needed week of R&R is coming!
Cheers!
