What just happened?

Just a short couple of months ago, I was getting ready for Ironman Coeur d'Alene, trying to keep my wife as comfortable as possible as she was incubating he newest member of our family, and trying to make sure I didn't neglect all the other aspects of my life.  I woke up today and all of the sudden, Ironman Coeur d'Alene is over, I have a new baby boy living in my house, and time seems to be a little more scarce to come by these days.  Ever since our little trip up to Idaho, time has really flown by!

A lot has happened in my life since that race, and it's actually very nice to be taking some time off of work to be at home with my family while we adjust to having this new little human to take care of.  He decided to make his grand entrance about two weeks ago, and record time.  My wife must have spectated too many triathlons while she was pregnant, because he is already working on moving as fast as possible!

And now that it's October, I have realized a couple things.  First, I apparently have a half-iron distance triathlon coming up in about two weeks.  I'm not even going to begin to pretend that I have trained appropriately for this race.  After the Ironman, I had every intention of keeping that fitness and seeing what I could really do at a shorter race.  Unfortunately, my body and mind had other plans.  I really needed a mental break, and because of this, I have not been as motivated to wake up at 5 am to work out.  All I can say is, hopefully I don't die in two weeks!  The other thing I've realized is that my next major goal will become a very real challenge at the end of this month.  Starting in the last week of this month, I will be embarking on another lofty marathon goal.  This time, I aim to qualify for Boston again.  However, the rules are a little different this time.

Because of the new qualification system, the time for my age group is now 3:05:00.  There is no longer the fifty-nine second grace period.  Also, runners are actually given slots based on how much they beat their required time by.  So, if I just squeak out a 3:04:59, I am likely to not actually get into the race.  To try and prevent this, I will be setting my sights a little higher.  And maybe too high.  I am aiming to run a 3 hour marathon.  For a lot of people, that's no big deal.  For me?  That's huge!

So that's that.  My plan is to again follow the Run Less Run Faster plan, because it served me so well last time.  Come the end of February/beginning of March, we will know the results!