Okay, I'm Ready

I got a whole year over here, well really only 9 months left, to work on my goals I told the oldlady I would work on while I was over here; be able to do a half-ironman and run a marathon. I did sprint distance triathlons my inaugural season. I planned on doing Olympic lengths this year, but due to scheduling conflicts and my train-up for Iraq, I was only able to get one sprint distance race in. All the Olympic length races fell on weekends I was at a range shooting something or blowing it up. Which would you have done? Well I would have done the triathlon, but I'm in the Army so I don't have a choice of which live fire exercise I can miss. Anyway, I feel, except for the swimming, that I could do an Olympic now, so I told my beautiful wife that I was going to train the whole year for a half-ironman upon my return to the states. My buddy Kevin wants me to do the Vineman with him next year. I’m in, as long as I can do half. Just kidding, I think it is a half. Now that I am used to the operational tempo over here, I think I can squeeze in some long workouts and still get my job done. The truth is that it is not so freaking hot anymore, so I don't mind going out and running long or riding long. When it was 120 degrees, I was not too motivated. I have an 8 week training plan, but I have plenty of time and don't want to injure myself, so I will stretch it out to 16 weeks. That is about how long I have till I go home on leave. I won't do a race then of course, I will be on vacation, but I will be in a lot better shape. Then, I can get ready for the '09 season and be in half-iron man shape when I get home in June of next year. I haven't picked a race to debut in, but the Vineman maybe an option.

I biked 9.35 miles of intervals last night on my el cheapo mountain bike. It's really flat here, but the gravel is deep and hard to ride through in parts, and in the back area of the FOB are some "sweet jumps". It took me an hour, and I felt good. Tonight, I'm running on the treadmill for 40 minutes easy. I was going to run with one of my interpreters outside, but we have a really bad dust storm and my allergies are bad enough right now. So instead, I will “rock out with my ipod out” and look like a hamster for 40 minutes. Wish me luck.