February and Close Encounters of an Ironman Kind...

So its only three weeks after February ended, but finally, here are the February totals:

Swim – 16,800 yards, 5 hours 45 minutes
Bike – 59.5 miles, 3 hours 30 minutes
Run – 159.2 miles, 23 hours 47 minutes
Total – 33 hours 2 minutes

Definitely down a bit from January, mainly due to two reasons: 1) Two weeks of February included my marathon taper, which meant running time and cutting back on cross-training, and 2) I was on vacation for a week!

After a few days off post-marathon, I have officially started Ironman training, with a huge focus on the bike. Since neglecting the bike more than I should have this winter, I've been adding more bike classes at the bike shop, which is also a good way to find out where all of these bikers ride when the weather is nice (I definitely need motivation and training partners). Last night I went to a class and wound up on a trainer next to Craig, who I found out did IM WI as his first IM last year. Then, tonight, I went to my Master's swimming class (basically swim team for adults) and I shared a lane with Carl, who happened to be wearing an IM WI swim cap, and upon asking, turns out Carl also did the IM last year for the first time.

It turns out that there are alot more Ironmen among us than we realize, leading normal lives by day, training their asses off by night and weekend. Since I signed up for IM WI, I've met so many people that have completed the race - I volunteered at a local 5k in November and wound up working next to a woman who had just done IM WI. Another Masters swim teammate was talking about the traithlons he had planned for the summer and casually mentioned IMMoo. A couple people in my office are actually training for the race too I found out recently (super helpful to have people in my office to talk to about this)!

All of these random encounters of the Ironman kind have been really cool. The Ironman is such a crazy goal, that those who have finished and those who have made it their goal LOVE to talk about it. I try not to talk about the IM too much, but as I'm sure many IM finishers know, the fact that one is attempting an IM seems to make it into many conversations (i.e. innocent question from colleague "what are you doing after work?" Future IMer response "biking for an hour and then running for 30 minutes, ya know, for my IRONMAN TRAINING"). So, I am very happy for these random encounters - I hope I get to meet many more ambitious triathletes and hear their stories! It will be nice to see some friendly faces on the course come September!