I'm baaaaaack!

"He's baaaaaaack!"

My original plan was to step away from blogging for the month of January and return in February with a recap of my big 2014 year! During that time, I waffled back and forth about doing a 2014 recap. I felt I really had covered so much of my 2014 journey here, as it was. One thing led to another, life got very busy, and both January and February slipped away! I am sure you have missed me horribly?! LOL!

Well, I am back and there are things I plan to blog about this year. I am sure there will also be plenty of random things that I feel compelled to post about as the year progresses. Yes, there is so much going on in my life that I am sure there will be plenty of fodder for my ramblings.

The Recap:

OK, here is where I shock and amaze you. I am keeping my "2014 Recap" to only a few paragraphs!

2014 was amazing!!! I set personal records in every distance I raced except for the 5K! I missed that by one second. That is right... one &#%!@? second. /sigh. And, in case you missed it (Bwahahahaha!), my biggest accomplishment was completing my first, very challenging IRONMAN, IRONMAN Florida.


The year that was 2014 saw me cover 226,845 yards of swimming, 3,735 miles of biking, 889 miles of running, 1 day and 14 hours of yoga, and 16 hours of strength training. This was a total of 20 days and 10 hours  of training. Wow! Nearly 20.5 days of training! I would not have had it any other way. I truly enjoyed the journey!


The Future (2015 At Least):

I am dialing back the racing and seemingly the race or distance-related goals in 2015. For 2015 I only had one big running challenge, the Gasparilla Distance Classic that we completed just last weekend and that I will be writing about soon, and a few Sprint-distance triathlons on the schedule. That is right, only Sprint-distance triathlons! No half IRONMAN or full IRONMAN this year.

Some of the reasons are:

• Family. My oldest daughter will be graduating high school next year and we want to spend some quality time this summer, before her life really gets hectic with senior year activities.
• Financial. This triathlon &#%!@? is expensive, yo! My unofficial IRONMAN 2014 sponsors, Visa/Mastercard/American Express/Etc. must be repaid. LOL!
• Sanity. IRONMAN training does take a lot of time and effort and taking a little break after my first one seemed like the rational thing to do.

And now for the biggest, competitive reasons... I want to work on my speed and nutrition.

Speed: IRONMAN was a lot of long and seemingly slower-paced efforts. I lost a lot of the speed I had the year before and would like to see if I can not only get that back, but get faster. I remind you that I am only a few years into this sport and learning more and more every day. I think I definitely have a lot of gains to still be made.

Nutrition: Sweet Jimmy do I like to eat and drink. I am so good at it that people will see me doing it, stop, and take my picture. Yeah... that good at it. Well, I need to work on a sustainable lifestyle that will help me be the best that I can be. I have a lot of deeply ingrained habits that I still need to break. I am getting healthier and making better decisions, but it will take time to undo years and years of bad choices and programming. It will be a huge challenge, but I am on the right track and I love a challenge!

I hope you will come along for the ride and always welcome any feedback you might have?! Thanks!