A bit of history

Where to begin? I started running in my late 20s in St. Louis. I worked for the Y in Brentwood MO and had a guy that was in his 70s and a hardcore runner (herb) that would hassle me everyday - "How can you call yourself a Trainer and you don't run?".  Finally, I decided to put an end to Herb's daily, um, encouragement, and I started  walk/running, then running. It was painful, I definitely didn't like it all that much but I stuck with it and eventually looked forward to it. Over the next several years, I went from 5ks -> 10ks -> half marathons -> marathons. I have a group of awesome endurance athlete friends that I met online back in 2001 and we'd meet up at races and start to influence each other with crazy races and ideas (love you guys) and next thing I knew we were all starting to catch the triathlon bug. We all met up and did a century ride (100 miles) in IL and I started doing triathlon in 2003. I followed a similar path to running - sprint-> olympic -> half ironman. In 2005 I was training for a full ironman (Wisconsin) when I had a bad bike crash on a training ride - grade II concussion, tons of road rash and later found out I partially tore my quadricep. I still have a divot in my upper left quadricep to mark the scene of the crime. That ended ironman training in 2005. It was the first race that I've signed up for and didn't make the start line and thus has been a thorn in my side ever since.

Over the last few years, I met my husband, had a mini me daughter (now almost 4 yrs old) and lived in 3 different states finally landing here in Atlanta late 2009. Needless to say, my training has been, well yeah, sporadic to put it nicely. I started resuming my running routine in 2009 coaching for Team in Training TN and doing a few races before moving to Atlanta. I travel Internationally on business usually once a quarter for 2.5-4 weeks at a time so it's been interesting to try and get my training runs in per the schedule. Our company CEO, Jean-Yves talks about what our company Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is as we're still a very entrepreneurial, small operation. I guess this is my BHAG for my personal life, Ironman Arizona 2011.

When I started talking about this with my friend Paige who was signing up too (she kept getting kicked out of the registration and didn't make it before it sold out in 20 minutes...) and Brad (husband), I really thought about whether this would be feasible given my currently low endurance base, travel and work schedule, desire to maintain a healthy family life and everything else. I know plenty of people that have crazy schedules like mine (and worse) and make it work. It's a matter of time management and how bad do I want it? Like enough to get up and workout at 3 or 4 am or stay up late working out to get in? I think so, we'll find out right?

I hope you'll comment, chime in, interact with me on here frequently. I hope to keep it an interesting read covering some of my training and life tribulations. Believe me, there will be a lot since I haven't been training on 2 of the 3 race disciplines in a couple of years so it should be an adventure to get my swim and bike endurance back up in time. I've got a year to make it happen. I just want to finish Ironman under the 17 hour cut off, that's all I ask, pretty please? Thanks for reading and following along!