Signed up for Ironman Canada. Looks like 2007 is going to be the Ironyear for me. Arizona in April, Canada in August. Oh boy.
I was on the phone with my mom, who really wants me to do IMC for a few reasons (it’s fairly close to Spokane, etc.). Anyway, I was resisting the idea and as a way to get her to stop pressuring me, I used the secret weapon. She, can be a little on the frugal side, so I said “Look, these things are like $500 bucks, so I’m not really sure I want to ante up that kind of cash and have the whole year of training. If you want to cover my entry fee, then I’ll think about it.” I figured this would stop her dead in her tracks. She says “yeah, sure, I’ll do that.” No! Wrong answer! Crap!
So I had that going for me. Clearly a very generous offer, but it made me seriously think about it. Other people were starting to talk about it too – the Wanke’s decided to do it as well as it being the "big" race for everyone else who lives in the area. It was fun being up in Penticton and seeing so many people I knew. What's ironic is that I didn't intend to even get a slot when we were up there, it was just so easy (and non-binding) I did it just for the heck of it.
Anyway, the real logic is as follows. A conversation with my dad helped cement this reasoning.
I’m injury prone, period. And it's extra tough to deal with because I never do something, and go "oh ouch, that's not good". No, that would be too easy. I'll have a twinge or something that doesn't seem like a big deal and two days later I'm limping all over the place. It makes injuries very difficult to debug - knowing what I did when to cause the problem - and I've often caused other problems trying to figure it out. Not cool. I've got a 30 year old body and 70 year old tendons.
well, I can crank up a fair amount of anxiety about my body-state, with respect to injuries and being able to race and train. Reading all the IMC race reports, and being there for what happened to Todd, it’s clear that you can train your ass off for 6, 8, 10 months and then have that all go to hell for about a million reasons. There are so many things that have to go right. And, unlike any other distance race, you can’t just pick another one to do a month later. The races all fill up for the following year within days or weeks of the event, so basically if you want to do another race you're waiting a whole year or more.
So I’ve got some stuff that’s not getting better in my little “rest period” like I want it to, so I’m starting to freak a bit – IMAZ is *only* 7.5 months away you know?!?!
At the end of the day I realized that having a "backup" race will lower my stress level siginifcantly. If things aren't going perfectly, I'll be much more likely to take it in stride because, worst case, I can regroup for IMC in August. It starts to make a lot of sense. What's more likely is that I'll learn a lot from IMAZ and be all jacked up to give it another try to do better. This is how it usually goes with me.
But this brings up a bunch of issues about how I manage 11 solid months of training without a motivational meltdown. Maybe it is time to get a full-time coach...