Training guide and race goals

I spent some time last night trying to put together a monthly training schedule for January and February. I honestly think that aside from actually doing and Ironman, the second hardest thing is actually planning your training.

If you're like me, family, work and life must be balanced with the total number of hours you hope you can spend training. I learned from last year as well, that a training plan should really be considered a training guide. Let's face it - life happens. Keeping everyone in the family happy is what it's all about.

I also went through the exercise of capturing my goals for each race - something that was key to my mental 'success' in 2009. This is what they look like:

1. Tempe: Under 3 hours
2. Bismarck: Improve Tempe time by 20%
3. Lake Stevens: Beat Mikel's (a friend) time of 5:46:56
4. Branson: Under 5:30:00
5. IM AZ: (1) Finish (2) Under 13:00:00

These feel very realistic and will help push me along throughout the year.