Holiday Stuffing and End of the Year thoughts.

If you took a thousand random pictures of me in December, they would look like the picture above. I have been stuffing my face at every opportunity. To make matters worse, I have been resting my body for most of the month with a full 10 days with no activity.

As we all know, the balance of calories in and out have some unwanted side affects on the body. I steered away from scale most of the month. I checked it in the middle of December and today. To my surprise, the damage was not as bad as I had anticipated. I came away with a gain of 6 lbs. I may not have gained allot of weight, but I have felt horrible all month. I actually miss my clean diet and fuel.

The month was not a total loss. For the first time in three years, I am rested, relaxed, motivated and injury free. These were my main goals for December. I knew I had to be at this level to begin the Ironman training.

I started exercising last week. I have been on my MTB several days last week and this week. The first couple of rides were horrible. I felt heavy, sluggish and I am fairly certain I was sweating sugar from all of the sweets I have been eating. One of the side affects of not maintaining a balanced diet is fluctuating blood sugar. The result has been sugar cravings galore.
The rides this week were much better and I had an awesome 2.5 hour MTB ride yesterday. I almost felt like my old self. My legs were strong, but my cardio is a bit weak. That is to be expected from a long layoff. I got back on the treadmill this week to get my legs moving. I will start outdoor running this weekend and continue my preparation for the Marathon in March. I am so ready to get back to real training.

2008 was a great athletic year! For starters, I finally lost weight. I ended up almost 40lbs less than 2007. I finished my first Half-Ironman and completed a Half marathon in less than 2 hours. One of the most exciting things of 2008 was the fact that I finished those events without much training. I was dieting so I didn't have the full energy and power I plan to have next year.

2009 should be an awesome year. I plan to lose another 15 to 20 lbs by April 1st. This will allow me to be near my high school weight and allow me to train and race hard the rest of the year. I have three big events next year. I will start with my first marathon in March, then a 24 hour ride with Geo to support Arkansas Children's Hospital and finish out with the big daddy, a full Ironman. I have several events and goals scattered throughout the year, but those are the big ones.

I have a very important goal that I have been able to reach every year since I started it. The goal is to enhance the friendships I already have and create several new ones. I have always been blessed with an abundance of friends. I would like to take a moment to thank all of my friends who shared 2008 with me. I hope we can continue to share good times and share our friendships with others.

I wish you all a great 2009!

Ironman Louisville - We are so there!

My wife and I have decided to do an Ironman event next year. We are taking the plunge and going for the 140.6 at Ironman Louisville on August 30th 2009.

For those of you who don't keep up with the Triathlon world, this is the holy grail, the grand daddy of them all, the life changing event. Believe me when I tell you, this was a big decision and was not an easy decision.

I call my wife while on the way home from work. We chat about what to grab for dinner and the usual, "how was your day", chat. Toward the end of the conversation, she mentions that our good friends, Jo and David, are doing the Ironman Louisville. David is a seasoned Ironman competitor, but this will be Jo's first Ironman. We started our Triathlon adventures around the same time as Jo, so I was getting that "left behind" feeling.

Rebecca and I had worked out our Ironman plans last year. We both decided we would do our first Ironman together when we turned 40. That is still three years away, so there was no pressure, until I heard Jo was taking the plunge. Truth be told, for the last few months, I had been slowly moving our Ironman plans up a year at a time. I had already convinced my wife we would look at doing and Ironman in 2010. She was not against the idea and I had confidence in my abilities to persuade her to participate.

We decided to eat out and headed over to Schlotzky's. During the entire ride and meal, I was a focused zombie. All I could think about was doing the Ironman. I had convinced myself I was ready to start the journey. However, I had one big issue. My wife and I planned to do our first one together. She immediately started telling me that is was fine with her if I took the plunge. She was definitely not doing it next year and would still target 2010. Being a man, I really didn't believe her. We had the same conversation ten times in the next thirty minutes. I finally decided to believe that she didn't mind me doing the event with her, but I didn't really believe it. Women never really say what they mean.

I went upstairs to change clothes with the idea of signing up when I was done. I came down the stairs and my wife immediately informed me to sign her up. I was a bit confused. I then noticed her cheeks and face were red. Oh crap, I know what that means, crying was involved in the decision. I walked over and gave her a hug and told her I wouldn't sign up. I didn't want to rush her and it was important that we do this together. She told me she had made up her mind and I need to sign her up right now before she changed her mind. I am husband, must obey.

We both hovered over the computer as I signed us up. I was more nervous signing up than I was starting an event. We were both nauseous after the sign up was complete. There was just something crazy about signing up. It made everything final and signified a complete change in our training mindset and lifestyle. This is big time stuff. You can do minimal training and complete a half-Ironman, but a full Ironman takes dedication.

We are going to stick to our holiday training plans. We will redo our yearly training plan for next year and have it ready by January 1st. Not only do we have redo our training plan, we have to redo our family plans and our daily routines. We have to get the house where we want it and a ton of other tasks we need to complete. Training for an Ironman takes a lot of time and energy.

We both have blogs and will routinely provide updates. This is going to be an awesome journey with friends. As I have always stated, the training journey with friends is the best part of an event. To all of our friends, we are going to need your companionship, your courage and occasionally a shoulder to cry on.