What's Next

Well, it has been over two weeks now since my time in Idaho and as tempted as I was to shut down the blog with my race report post, I’ve decided to go against everything I believe and keep it going. Don’t ask me why because I can’t really answer that so just check back every few days and I’ll hopefully keep this thing rolling with my training stories and mindless ramblings.

For now, I’ll answer a couple questions that some people have raised after I got back from Idaho:

Will you ever race another Ironman?

This one is easy – YES. Without a doubt, Ironman races are here to stay. I can’t say how many, but I do know that for the next few years I intend to race one or two each year, depending on the rest of my race schedule. For 2011, it’ll probably be a late season Ironman (possibly the unofficial Beach to Battleship or Ironman Arizona) unless I can qualify for the Boston Marathon this year. If that happens then the world is my oyster next year. But as I mentioned a couple months ago, my next goal is to shave some serious time off my marathon and qualify for Boston so that I can run it when my brother is a senior at Boston College. I don’t expect to hit this goal in my first try – Marine Corp Marathon, October 31, 2010 – but I’ll still be trying my hardest. I estimate that I need to shave somewhere around 15 minutes off my pace right now to make it under 3:10 but if I can do that, then 2011 will turn a competitive racing year instead of another building year. Just thinking about that possibility gets my head spinning.

How long will you be lazy before the itch to train kicks in?

This question is a bit trickier. I told everyone that I would be taking the month of July off to gain some weight back and catch up on all the beer drinking I missed but deep down I knew I wouldn’t last longer than two weeks. Since Idaho, I’ve gone for a couple shorter, high-intensity runs to keep my anaerobic capacity up while I take a break but I haven’t done much else. The goal was to get keep my 5:25 mile pace fairly consistent while I wasn’t training so that I could pick up right where I left off once marathon training started, as well as be in decent shape for our alumni league soccer playoffs. Sadly though, not only is the hope (errr… arrogant expectation) of a soccer championship a thing of the past, but thanks to the brutal 3-2 overtime loss to Emory (the only other high quality team in the league), my body is screaming for another week or two of recovery.

So for now, it’s no running or leg-smashing activity until my joints and muscles are back to normal. Bye bye running shoes, hello swimming pool.