The End.... of Ironman

I did a lot of soul searching this past weekend and after a painful run on Sunday, I made the decision to pull of of IM Florida. It's still quite painful when I run and the Achilles needs some dedicated time off to heal up and unfortunately I'm out of "slack" time in my training schedule. So, it is what it is and I have to be smart and listen to my body and back off. Initially, I thought I could just tough it out and truth be told if this would have happened last year prior to AZ I probably would have toughed it out but I'm in a different place right now and with 3 kids the last thing my wife needs right now is a 4th kid that's hobbling around on crutches because he let his ego make all of his critical decisions. It's funny, because 3 weeks ago when I saw the podiatrist and he told me I would be out 2-3 weeks I was crushed but now I almost feel relieved. It's going to be strange not waking up at 4am on Saturday and Sunday to ride all morning.

So what's next? This was my last opportunity (at least for a few years) to do another Ironman. For whatever reason, perhaps the injury, I'm feeling a tremendous amount of burnout on the whole triathlon thing so I'll probably take a few weeks off/possibly a month and switch back over to lifting weights and possibly just focus on non competitive marathon training to stay in shape. I'm also planning on enrolling at a local Takewondo school with the goal of getting a black belt. I'll need something to fill the hole of IM :)...

Anyway, the purpose of this blog was to track my training for IM Florida so since I'm not doing that anymore this will be my last blog entry. I appreciate everyone's support during my IM Journey.

Thanks,

Put me in coach, I can do it....

I went back to the podiatrist late last week and he gave me the green light to continue training. Since then I've had a pretty large training load (making up for lost time) and the Achilles is holding up okay. It still gets sore after running and long bike rides, so I don't think I'm quite out of the woods yet. I think this is going to be a nagging injury all the way through Florida and its going to require a lot of preventative maintenance type of stuff, like constant icing, etc which I SUCK at... My wife's chiropractor is an IM guy and he told her that he could help me so I'm going to go and see him later this week to see what voodoo magic he can do.

Other than that, things are going well. I've been like a caged tiger for the past few weeks so my motivation is high and I'm ready and willing to train, I just need my body to hold up for 11 more weeks. Wish me luck...