The big challenge

So triathlon completed on Monday morning, it was time to come home and log onto the computer to book the next race...  Actually, it's not exactly the next race, but it is my big 2013 season goal: Ironman 70.3 Zell am See, and partly the reason why I set this blog up.

Mr W and I were married in Zell am See in August 2011 (having got engaged there in December 2009), and as such it is a very special place to us.  Where better than to make my long course racing debut?  We have been planning to go back there for some time and this seems to us like the perfect excuse for a trip and holiday.

Since getting into tri, I have been keen to try something really challenging, and this will be the biggest challenge!  I don't yet have any interest in doing an Ironman as I can't see how I could fit the training into my current life-patterns but I think the 70.3 should be just about do-able.

For those of you unfamiliar with 70.3 events, they are half the distance of a full ironman.  This means a disproportionately short (compared with an Olympic Distance Tri) swim of 1900m, a 90km bike, and then a half marathon.   The swim must be completed within 1 hour and 10 minutes (that's the bit I'm confident about), the bike and swim by 5 hours, 15 minutes, and the whole thing within 8 hours, 30 minutes.  The bike cut off is what makes me nervous at present.  I've cycled maybe 50k so far, but certainly not in the half of the time allowed to me.  So there will be a lot of cycling training going on.

We've booked the time off work and we've booked to stay in the hotel where we were married from.  Nearer the time, we'll be looking at booking somewhere to stay on the way down there (we have conveniently located friends about halfway in Heidelberg).

I've already started looking at training schedules and have a vague idea of what I will need to do in my mind come the start of 2013; more excitingly, I've been looking at races that I can do in the run-up.  So far I've found a pool-sprint in March, Blenheim tri in June, an Olympic distance in early July, and I'm hoping that a half-iron-aquaman (the run and the swim without the bike) will fit into the calendar too.  I'm not going to completely abandon my swimming either as I hope to do my 10k swim again in May, date depending.  Oh and lots of R.E.S.T. will need to go in the schedule too, I know I can't properly train for this distance without taking a rest day each week!  But more on this all to come, I hope to blog about my journey to the 70.3 and I hope that you will follow it with me!