IM Date 9/23/08 - Good News

Good news...my buddy Adam (from Jiu-Jitsu) has offered to help me with my swim.  Which, to be honest, can use some help.  Of course getting a wet suit should help as well.  I just ran into my buddy "Dr. Ross" and he bought a wet suit this past year as well.  But the help with my technique will go a long way during what will surely be a long 2.4 miles in the lake with more than 2,000 other swimmers as well.

More to come...

IM Date 9/17/08

Well, this week we finally got our emails from the race so we could register.  I took care of registering both Jodee and I and now there's no turning back!!!  I have set up an expense log for this race.  I'm sure at the end of it I will look at how much we have spent and ask myself "what the hell was I thinking???  Do you know what we could have done with that money???"  But oh well...you only live once.  And it was not that long ago that I wouldn't have thought it would be possible for me to run a marathon.  But Jodee assured me then, that I could..."no problem."  She hasn't told me that in this case yet...not that she will and not that I'd believe her.  But if I train like I should and my bike holds up over the course of 112 long, hilly miles...I will finish.  Dammit if I have to drag my broken and exhausted body across the finish line...I will finish that race.

So on what would be exactly a year before the race, this past Sunday morning Jodee and I did a nice 22 mile run in the hills of Champlin, MN.  Kind of fitting...since in a year from now we'll see 26.2 miles of hills in Madison.  We finished it fine...rain and all.

So as of today...the expenses are at a cool $1,279.45...basically our registration fees as well as the gas and food from our trip to WI to register.  I still need to purchase a wetsuit and I'm sure there will be many other training expenses before race day.

And the fun continues...

And the journey begins...

After doing various triathlons over the past few years, I completed my first half-Iron Man distance triathlon.  After the race, my thoughts of doing a full-Iron Man were different than before the race.  Even though I raced well and finished well ahead of when I thought I would or could...it was tough.  Plain and simple.  My wife, the person I blame (just kidding...kind of) for getting me into triathlons, running, etc. started to get some pressure from her training partners to do a full iron man.  I told her she was nuts, that they were nuts, etc.  But somehow the thought of "...well if you're going to do it, I'll do it with you" came from some deep, dark place within my brain where things like logic and reason apparently do not live.

So after rescheduling appointments at work, taking a day-off and playing a gig with my band the night before, we woke up at just after 2:00am on September 8th and drove to Madison , WI to register for the 2009 Iron Man Wisconsin.  After a 5 hour drive we got to stand in line (in the cold and rain...no one said the line was outside!!!) for 3 hours to walk up, show my ID and put my name and address on a piece of paper.  That was it!!!  We didn't even actually register!  We then turned stood in another line (indoors at least) for another almost hour to reserve a hotel for next year.

We then turned around to drive right back home.  The adventure was under way.