Yeah, I could probably do that too...

I signed up for Iron Man Canada. My goal has never been to do a IM. I don't think to be a triathlete you have to ever do or think of doing an Iron Man. I hate it when you tell someone you're doing a tri and their first reaction is " so you're swimming like 3 miles and biking 200 miles and running a marathon?!?"

I guess it just shows how obscure the sport of triathlon still is. The only real thing the majority of people know about it is what NBC show's in late Dec from Kona. A 9-17 hour plus race in just over two hours...

I always feel odd when I have to tell the person "no, it's a .9 mile swim, 24ish mile bike, 6 mile run" or whatever distance it is. The look goes from - OH, Cool - to - oh, that's nice.
With the overtone of - yeah, I could probably do that too...

A friend of mine asked - so after IM what do you do? Ultra Tri's? 100 mile footraces?
I thought about it for a awhile and pondered whether or not it was worth ranting off my reason's why IM is not the end of the road or the Everest of the sport for me. (for a lot I think)

Instead I just said I'll focus on training before I focus on what's next, after all it is still some 11 months down the road. I don't think that was the answer he wanted. Good thing I'm not doing it for him...

I am doing it, after years of saying I had no interest in doing it because I feel my body is at the point of being able to take the training (no small point) and I have the support group of friends to train with in place to keep the focus over the long road ahead. Two things I didn't have in place that are going to be huge in the small details of getting ready. Just like running a marathon, you have to survive training before you can even think about running 26.2.

For myself I don't really buy the mentality of signing up for a race or event to just survive the day. I want training to be as hard as possible to reflect the race that I'm jumping into. Whether that's a sprint, Oly, 70.3 or IM. Racing at my limit has always been what the long training months have been about.

Always! If not, then what is the point of being away from family and friends and putting up with all the pain and restrictions for.

This next year of training starts soon and w/ out the thought of, for lack of a better term, training to be stronger, faster and better. I don't see the point. So I guess that's just a long way of saying that I don't see IMC as just try and survive the day, but a race.

Don't get me wrong, surviving the day will be I'm guessing 50% of the day, if I'm lucky to have it be that little, but the focus and goal is to be ready for a day of racing. A day that shows all the work in training come forward and all the goals realized. A day of racing like it was your best 5K sub 20....