The Plan - Spring 2013

With my sights set on Ironman Texas in May, it isn't too difficult to plan out the next few months. For Dawn's other athletes training for Texas, training officially began 2 weeks ago. She told me to take it easy the next month or so, and start hitting it hard again in January. Even though I didn't finish the race at Ironman Arizona, I'm supposed to recover like I did the whole thing.

I can't swim yet because the deep cut on my leg is still healing. (I didn't end up getting stitches. At the urgent care, they told me that it would just need to heal, and that it would take a long time to do so, and they were right.) But I have been biking and running - I've pretty much been following Aixa's base building plan (with Dawn's blessing. She says I just don't need to feel "obligated" to do all the workouts). It's comforting to get back into the routine, although it's also nice to have an excuse not to get up super early 3 mornings a week to swim.

As I notice my newly crowned Ironman friends around me lacking motivation to get out there and train (ahem, Shelly!), I'm glad to have a carrot to chase through the holidays. I'm pretty sure that I'd be very unmotivated right now as well if I didn't have anything big coming up.

My favorite thing right now is having permission to blow off structured workouts and just going out to ride! Shelly and I had an awesome ride out to Castroville on Tuesday, just chit chatting our heads off like old times. We're already looking forward to riding the Helotes loop/211 next week. So we'll have some fun for a while... and then the work will begin again. Starting in January, basically, I get a month of Build 1, a month of Build 2, a month of Race Prep, then Taper, and then May 18 will be here!

The coolest thing is that I'll be attending Hillary Biscay's awesome training camp about 6 weeks before the race - which is pretty much perfect timing. I had already signed up for the camp because I loved it so much last year. I was feeling kind of weird about going without having an ironman on the calendar to train for - I guess that worked itself out! Last year, Shelly and I had a totally amazing, transforming experience there - that camp turned us into athletes and set us on a road to believing in ourselves as real competitors. We grew just through completing the workouts. This year, I want to see how far I've come. I'm psyched to have friends going to camp (as well as Coachie), and I can't wait for Aixa, Linda, and Herb to experience the camp. I hope they get as much out of it as I did last year.

I'm also looking forward to the structured training led by Coachie, particularly the trip out to Vanderpool in February (probably not on Shelly's birthday this year, haha) to smash some hills. We have a 1-hour timed swim coming up in January, which is something I've never done before. 2013 is looking like fun!

Here's a pic of me and Shelly at last year's camp. *sniffle*