Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Life has been pretty busy for me lately… between my recent trip to Seattle to spend time with family, closing on my first Texas house, and finishing the Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3 triathlon with a respectable (hopefully) time there just hasn’t been much free time outside of that! I’m somehow managing to keep my career happy and progressing well (which is a fantastic thing) and some semblance of a social life, there’s nothing to complain about!

I have certainly been pondering one question for the past two to three months… why am I doing my second Ironman in November? I already ‘checked the box’ for having successfully completed an Ironman-distance triathlon in Coeur d’Alene in 2009… what is it I’m trying to find in Arizona this year? I’ve also learned a lot about how much more difficult it is to mix prep for an Ironman with career life… things were much easier in 2009 when free time was abundant during the peak of the training effort for IM CdA. I’m having more difficulty making it all happen this year, and honestly there are a bunch of things in life that I desire to give a greater amount of attention to than getting ready for another Ironman.

One other item worthy of note is having fun with your other-than-work interests… hobbies are supposed to be fun, that’s why we do this, right? I have a BLAST when I do half iron/70.3 events… but I don’t know that I love the Ironman distance events as I do the half iron/70.3 events. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting excited to do the long training this season. T here’s not that large of a difference between riding 110 miles and 70 miles in numeric terms, but wow… when you’re on the road actually doing it the difference is huge in terms of life impact. The same can be said between a 15mi run and a 20mi run… yes, it’s only 5 more miles, but the difference in life impact is far larger than the number can illustrate.

After giving this question as to why I am doing IMAZ ‘10 careful consideration for about three months, I’ve decided to withdraw from Ironman Arizona 2010 and instead race the Ironman 70.3 Texas (Austin) and the San Antonio Rock n Roll half marathon. I can’t get enough of the half iron/70.3 distance triathlon events, and it’ll be fun to get my running season started a bit early. In the meantime, not doing Ironman will free up more time (and mental bandwidth) to focus on other areas of my life that I’d really love to give more attention to… getting my house in order, spending more time with family, building more into my social life… and I can do all this while still enjoying the long distance endurance racing that I’m so in love with. It’s clearly the right solution for me.

Making this change is bittersweet; I really love the camaraderie that is built amongst my teammates as we train and race together for the longer stuff. I love supporting my teammates and sharing the experience as we all prepare to race, and I certainly plan on doing that as I would if I was racing.

Onwards and upwards!