It's Ironman Time!

Well, I did it.  After months of waffling around with my pithy thoughts on my 2011 race season, today I finally bit the bullet.  In exactly 4 months, 2 weeks and 4 days, I will be jumping into the Choptank River , biking through Blackwater, and running a marathon in Cambridge, Md.  Yup, I signed up for another Ironman!

Now, truth be told, I have had this race on my radar since December.  I'm even training for it with my plan from trigeek.com (yup, I'm self coached.  This plan worked well for me for Ironman Lake Placid, so I'm not gonna mess with success.)  But for some reason, I've held off on actually signing up for it.  I was unsure if I wanted to give my sub 4 marathon goal another crack this year (at the Wineglass marathon on my birthday!) or if I wanted to do another Ironman in 2011.  Well, after discussing with the hubster and some understanding friends, as well as doing a bit of soul searching....I decided to go with my heart and do another Ironman. 

Why?  Well, for one thing, training for an Ironman is more time consuming than marathon training.  You have to factor in long hours on the bike and long hours on bricks (bike-run), which is much more time consuming than marathon training (long runs tap out at about 3 hours).  I think this will be easier to do with lil turds rather than Ironman training. 

Second of all, my season for 2011 has set me up to be in great shape to rock out this race.  I've already run a marathon, and I have been putting in the hours on the bike and in the pool to make my endurance even better than where it was in 2010.  And I was super happy with my performance in Lake Placid!  Wonder what I can do with a less hilly course? :-)  Lastly, and most importantly....I can taste Ironman.  That might sound strange to some...but Placid left such an impression on me, that I cannot wait to bite the 140.6 monster again.  To swim 2.4 miles.  To spend 6 (ish) hours on my bike on the racecourse.  To run a marathon and cross the finish line with a shiver of accomplishment of a day well raced and perservered.

This might sound crazy.  But when people ask me about my first Ironman, this smile crosses my face and I am transported to a day of magic.  Was it painful?  Sure.  Did I get tired?  Oh, you bet.  But to me, the day was one of the best of my life-I enjoyed every minute of it in a "I am so happy to be alive and so lucky to be doing this race" type of way.  Of course I remember the problems....my bike crash....hitting the wall at mile 24 of the marathon....but even during those points, I remember thinking...i can't WAIT to do this again. 

And now, I can.  Although its not an "M Dot" race (branded by WTC), I get to taste 140.6 again.  And to me, that's a date set with me and Ironman on September 24th.

I can't wait.