Becoming an Ironman!

I drove home from Madison feeling as excited as I imagine I would be after having been asked to marry the man of my dreams. But I also thought that maybe this was better! ;)

I knew from training for two marathons and several shorter triathlons that I had a lot of work ahead of me. I knew that not only had I committed myself to a 140.6 mile race to be held in a year from the day I signed up, but I also committed myself to hours upon hours of training.

I had also been registered to run the Las Vegas marathon again in December of 2009, so I was still training for that in September. I was much more disciplined at my marathon training at this point in time. I had figured out that long runs are an essential part of marathon training. Somehow one of my long runs got pushed back to a Tuesday in early October....a Tuesday which just happened to be my birthday! I had plans for dinner that night and so I thought I would take care of that pesky long run that day. It was raining slightly as I was preparing for my run, it was also getting chilly as well, so I layered up in what I thought was the appropriate weather proof running gear. I was wrong! I was also wrong about how much it was going to rain! I had been in races with worse weather and I thought I could handle it. At this point in time I really thought that 22 miles in the rain and some cold would not be a big deal, had I kept believing this I would have been totally fine. Problem was when I was about 6 miles from home, I stopped believing I could handle finishing my run in the elements of the day. I decided I would take the bus home and figured I would be home and dry and warm in maybe a half hour at the most! I was wrong, about the most wrong I had ever been in my life. I am not the most familiar with the bus routes and got myself on the wrong bus more than once. I ended up in downtown Minneapolis waiting for the right bus to get me home. At this point in time I was no longer moving my body and my clothes were totally drenched so I was starting to get very very cold. Actually to be honest, to say I was cold is an understatement! I was chilled to and through the bone. What really sucked was that it took me more than two hours to get home on the bus. It is safe to say that this day was the lowest point I have ever reached in my years of training. The very worst part was knowing that I gave up on myself that day. I could have survived the rain. I could have either finished the run or just turned around and ran home and in either case would have gotten there faster, and warmer! While I felt so down on myself that day, I learned a huge lesson, I learned that quitting when you are doing something major in your life like this, is never the correct answer. It seems so much easier to take the "easy way out", but the thing I learned is that there is no such thing as "the easy way out". "The easy way out" always leads to something much harder than having had stuck out the original challenge. This is something that applies to life as a whole...not just marathon/triathlon training!

I did re-do that long run two days later, and this time I succeeded!

In the end I ended up not being able to afford to go to Las Vegas to run the 2009 Las Vegas Rock-n-Roll Marathon. It killed me to make that decision, but it was what it was. There will be other marathons and I will get the chance to do that marathon again in the future!

When I knew I was no longer facing a marathon in December 2009, I backed off my training a little bit. I knew I would have plenty of time in the gym and on the trails in the coming months!