Ironman Training To Start (Almost) As Planned

George would be bummed.

I'm sure most of you are motivated enough to file your taxes by April 15th.  Not me.  I like to wait until the last possible moment.  This will probably change next year since all my 2011 income will be recorded via a W2 statement.  But the last few years I've either been self employed or a contractor and as a result things got a little more complicated.  Complications lead to delays and delays lead to filing extensions.

Early last week I found out I owe more tax than I had originally thought.  WAY more.  This, of course, is not good and Mary is (understandably) on a tear.  I'm being (rightfully) reigned in.  One of the things that will not make the final cut of our financial inquisition is the coach.  As a result I'll be self coaching myself through Oceanside and Coeur d'Alene.  Although nixing the coach is the correct decision globally, my micro world of triathlon is being turned upside down.  I'm not really knowledgeable enough to do this on my own.  Sure, I've helped a few people here and there through the coachme.com site.  But this "help" was much more basic and geared towards athletes who wanted to finish their first sprint triathlon.  My needs are a bit more complex - I'd like to finish Oceanside with a respectable time and I want to finish Coeur d'Alene standing up and alive.

Disappointed?  Yes.  Dettered?  No.  The circumstances are what the are and there's nothing I can do about it except move forward.  I'm currently 24 weeks out from Oceanside and 36 weeks out from Couer d'Alene.  Tomorrow I leave for New York City for the week.  Though I won't be able to get that much training in past a couple of morning runs in Central Park and a couple of evening gym sessions, I will have time to do the research and select the plan I will use to self coach.  And when I get back it will be go time.

I've reviewed a couple of 36 week Ironman plans already.  I'll spend this week drilling down on each and then pick one, slim it down by a week to start on October 24th and then figure out how to best modify it to execute for Oceanside.  I'm not concerned about missing the week, I wasn't going to start with the coach until November 1st anyway.  What I am concerned about is building Oceanside into the plan.  Like I said, my knowledge and experience has it's limits.  But people have race schedules like this all the time and I'm sure with enough research I will find an answer that works.

Coeur d'Alene Swim Start

Regardless of the coaching change, I'm ready to go.  I've had a lot of rest.  I've got a bunch of things done for work.  I've also put a major dent in the living room remodel - even with a restart in training the work will be done in November.  Once I pick the plan, I'm going to print it all out and stick it in a big binder right down to color coded tabs for each week.  This may be normal for some of you, but I've been a iPhone carrying, Kindle reading paperless guy for years.  Yet I feel like this is a good time to buck the trend and create something that I can touch, feel and (gasp!) hand-write notes in the margins if I want.  I'm also going to stop using beginnertriathlete.com as my training log and start using trainingpeaks.com.   Training Peaks just seems like a better platform to me.

So that's the news - I'll be formally starting Ironman training in a week, but I'll be doing it solo.