Well, my tri season is over and I sat down and thought about what I wanted to accomplish next year. I also considered what I thought would help me the most in reaching those goals and below will be a recap of what I have come up with.
Following my first Ironman (Florida in 2005), I basically took the next 6 months off anything remotely competitive and followed that up with a 2006 in which I only participated in 5 road cycling races. No, I wasn’t injured, I was unmotivated and lazy and I don’t want that to happen again, so I have to get going. So far I have been able to maintain some sort of fitness and luckily I have been injury free and feeling good (all things considered). Because of this, and the other factors that I will explain shortly, I have decided to at least put together a plan to follow and try to get myself ready for the Rocket City marathon in Huntsville, AL.
At this point, you may be asking yourself (or someone sitting close by) one question. Is this guy insane for trying to come back from the Ironman and start training for a marathon? Well let me present my other reasons for wanting to run this race.
First and foremost, my younger brother has signed up for a marathon class at Ball State University and the class culminates with the running this marathon. This will be his first marathon and as far as the last time I talked to him, he was really excited. It will be a great experience to be able to share this excitement with my brother. I hope that he has a better first marathon experience than I did and I think that he will because he is going in with realistic expectations (unlike myself, but that is totally different blog topic).
Secondly, I want to erase that only other open marathon experience from my mind. I struggled to a time that I thought that I could run with my eyes closed, but I wasn’t prepared for the mental wars that one has to fight with oneself during the marathon. I have gone through these both in the marathon and now in both of the Ironmans that I have finished. At this point, I would have to say that I am better prepared to deal with the mental struggles……but not immune to them.
Finally, I have preliminary plans of training to complete two Iron-distance races next summer. Obviously, this depends on many things from funds to health, but right now I am thinking that I want to do two next year. Because of this idea, I want to see how much and how quickly I can handle training after an Ironman so this is what I have decided to do in order to test myself. I would say that the race and the training for an open marathon are more intense and harder on the body than the training that I was doing for the Ironman, so if my body can hold up through this, then I think that I should be able to come back from an Ironman in August for another in November.
Well, here’s too testing your limits and setting your sights on next year. And oh, by they way, after the marathon, I will be taking a month of rest and relaxation……until my new road bike comes in and I get the itch to ride it.
Jeff
