Hopefully the tropical beauty of the Caribbean will show me mercy. Ironman St Croix 70.3 is less than two weeks away and is coming much earlier in the year than any race at this distance in my previous years of triathlon. Training time and intensity has been lacking this time around. Its been tough to get the hours in this early with 80% of my training being done indoors due to the weather. Ive missed out on some key long runs and long rides along the way, though I have been able to keep steady with my swimming and have been cranking it on the bike the past two weekends on the biggest hills around Louisville. Its about that time to start the packing list and get ready for a completely different type of race than ever before. A lot of firsts for me: first ocean swim, first ‘right hand drive’ system of roads, first run across pavement sand and golf course, first international race (even though it is the US Virgin Islands).

While I might be a bit undertrained, I have to keep my eye on the prize later in the year to race Ironman Louisville again which is definitely my A race of the year. I wont be able to do Short Course Nationals again because they are the week before IMKY, but Im thinking about replacing that with Long Course Nationals in Oklahoma City about 3 weeks after. This is one of the rare championship races in triathlon where you can qualify with a time rather than finishing ahead of a certain amount of other competitors. They typically qualify only by placing because the finish time between courses can be vastly different from one race to the next due to the layout of transitions, topography of the bike course, effect of wind and weather conditions. 5:05 is the qualifying time for my age group and my personal best is 5:02 which I set last year in Muncie (during a torrential thunderstorm mind you), so I just need to do that again this year. Not sure about it though because it would be another trip just to show up like last year because I was so wasted from Ironman still and the competition is so good.

These are good problems to have friends. I continued to be amazed at what feats God grants our bodies to perform and am thankful everyday that I can choose to spend my free time swimming, biking and running … and be competitive at that!