Winter and Ironman

This month is the start of my 33^rd year of living in Utah. Winter shows up with a vengeance every year. I moved here from the eastern Oregon/Washington area where we did not have much of a winter. I don’t like winter. I am not sure what possessed me to stay here in the beginning. As a poor young person, I walked to work at the U without owning a pair of gloves or boots. My parents sent me these necessities for Christmas that first year.  Utah is such a beautiful state with so much to see and I have to believe that is what kept me here.

No running for me the past couple of weeks. I have been in a medically induced state of rest. Last week after returning from the Iron Girl Triathlon, I endured a PRP (platelet rich plasma) injection in my hamstring. This is the third time I have done this and it has really helped me heal. If you’ve never heard of this, Google it. It’s not a very fun process but I truly believe it has helped me get and stay pain free. The deal is no exercising for a couple of weeks and then starting back light the next week. The timing was good for me since my October schedule had thrashed my legs fairly good and rest was in order.

On a good note, I found out that for the Nike Women's Half Marathon that I ran two weeks post-marathon where I wasn't too sure about my legs, I placed 177/881 in my age group. this is the best I have every run in one of the "big" races.

The countdown is 130 days to my half distance Ironman in Monterrey, Mexico. In my mind, it seems far away but it will be here before I know it! Staying healthy while training is my biggest focus. I believe that I will make the cutoff times and finish the race.

Somewhere during the weekend my thoughts turned to whether I could actually compete in a full ironman distance race. I kept trying to push these thoughts away, especially since I’ve made the declaration that I never want to run a marathon again. It stayed on my mind through yesterday and after looking at potential locations and checking with my coach, I took the plunge and registered for Ironman Texas 2014.

This scares the crap out of me but I believe we need to do things that scare us periodically.  More to come on this development and the training. I’m happy that a bunch of my friends will be competing at this race and I can learn from them.

I still don’t like winter but I am much better equipped at handling it these days.