a new goal

day zero

first off, i just want to catch up and say that the transplant went better than ever could have been expected. my sister is doing wonderfully, and i came through it much more easily than i ever thought i would. ok, nuff said about that.

after a couple of years of dawdling around, trying to convince myself that i wanted to do another ironman, i've finally come to peace with the fact that an ironman is just not in the cards for me right now. that doesn't mean i'll never do another one, but it'll be a while. i just do not have the time to adequately train for an event like that. i suppose i could probably get myself to the point where i could finish under the 17-hour cutoff, but i'm not sure i want that at this point. i did alot of running before the transplant surgery, and really started liking it. after thinking about it a bit, i realized that while the best i could do in ironman right now is a total back-of-the-pack finish, i could train enough to become a middle-of-the-pack marathon finisher. run training i can do anytime. i always run at nite anyway, and long runs on weekends are doable. the problem with ironman training is that biking is difficult because i don't really have any daytime hours free, especially during the week. swimming is almost impossible, because the town where i work now doesn't have a facility like a YMCA where i could go swim. when i trained for my ironman a few years ago, i had a work schedule that gave me the morning free (to bike), and was located only a couple of miles from the IU natatorium in indianapolis. this allowed me to get in sufficient time swimming and biking, and i just can't see that happening in the foreseeable future.

so what's the plan now? the chicago marathon. that's my new adversary. tomorrow is officially day one of my 6-month training plan. i've been running semi-regularly since the middle of february, so it's not like i'm starting completely over, but i'm not in as good shape as i was in late january. i ran 4 times this past week, 3-4 miles each time. tomorrow calls for three miles, but i might do more since i'm a little ahead of the game at this point.

i'm very excited to finally have a long term goal. i'm working on some targets that i'll be shooting for, and i'll post them in the coming months. this is going to be a fun summer of training. the weather is already looking up, and i feel great.

day one is tomorrow. i can't wait.