Upcoming events update

Thanks, everyone, for your very helpful advice and perspectives on my training and event plans. Your comments have given me lots of food for thought. Don't you hate it when you give a lot of personal feedback on a blog and then never hear what happens? I try not to do that and leave my loyal readers hanging!!! This is the current update, subject to revision, naturally!

Last week I entered the St. Michaels Historic Century on September 10th (although I may opt to ride the metric century of 62 miles), and the full 100 miler at the Seagull Century on October 8th. That's in addition to the 2 or 3 marathons that I'll be doing between October 1st and November 6th.

I don't have any triathlons on the "confirmed" list at all right now. I'm still thinking. I have done very little swimming since Eagleman, either, so I'll need to get up to speed in the water first before I take on any more triathlons immediately.

I think the long rides and the marathons in the fall should tell the tale for me and will help me decide whether I should attempt a full ironman-distance triathlon in 2006, or instead continue next year just doing shorter triathlons and other running and cycling events. If I can't get myself within striking distance of some of my running and cycling performance benchmarks this fall, it seems prudent to postpone entering a full ironman-distance triathlon until I get a little faster and thereby closer to knowing with confidence that I can actually finish an ironman by the cutoff times. I don't worry at all about my mental toughness, or endurance - I'm confident in those, I've only DNFd two (running) races, and those only after 12 miles when I was actually getting injured. My total concern is my speed (or lack thereof).

A friend of mine on the other side of the world is helping me work out a triathlon training plan for the next four months, when we will have the 2006 Florida Ironman drop-dead entry date. Stay tuned and we'll see what he comes up with, and what kind of progress I make. Then again, there are several good prospects for non-m-dot ironman-distance triathlons out there that I could tackle in the fall of 2006 without having the expense and long-term advance commitment of IMFL06. But they wouldn't be as fun as doing IMFL06 with my fellow tri-bloggers, it's true. Ahhh, trade-offs.