I will be racing Ironman Texas on April 27, 2019.

There, I said it.

I start documenting my road to IMTX 2019 with all sorts of doubts in my mind. In theory, I have been training for four months. In reality, I am writing this as I nurse a foot injury that has kept me from running for the last 10 weeks. I went to see a sports doctor yesterday morning and he ordered a bone scan which I promptly got yesterday afternoon. Now, I am not a radiologist but my shin lit up like a Christmas tree in the images I saw and I’m afraid I will be diagnosed with a stress fracture. As a newcomer to the sport of triathlon, training for Ironman is hard enough without the looming prospect of an injury but those are the circumstances I am facing and will overcome because make no mistake: I will be racing Ironman Texas on April 27, 2019.

Why am I doing this? I suppose everyone who ever attempted to do a full distance triathlon was just looking for a challenge. In my case, I was always in awe of the distances involved: 2.4 miles in the water followed by 112 miles on the bike followed by a full 26.2-mile marathon. I mean, running a marathon is quite an accomplishment on its own but these people were running it after a 112-mile bike ride. That just seemed well outside of my personal limits. I am not a strong swimmer by any stretch of the imagination and I have not ridden a bike in about 20 years. And then there’s my love-hate relationship with the run. See, I think I can run and I like doing it but for some reason I have developed runner’s knee and can’t run without a brace. Instead for the last 12 years I lifted weights as running took a secondary role in my life. Then, my sister went and did IM Cartagena 70.3, which was pretty bad-ass, and she followed it with IM Los Cabos. And then my brother-in-law raced IM Lima 70.3 so all of the sudden it seemed feasible: maybe I could do it. So here I am, after many years of thinking about it, finally having the guts to go and race a full Ironman.

Documenting my road to IMTX is important to me. I think it will help keep me focused and maybe one day, when my daughters are older, they will take the time to read it and realize that it is never too late to do anything and that discipline and hard work can take you far in life.

As of today, I have 39 weeks to be ready. I don’t know if that is enough but it will have to be. As I mentioned earlier, I have been kind of training for about 4 months. It hasn’t been the most structured of programs, especially because the leg injury threw me off course, but it has been fun and challenging. For a newbie I think I have made progress and there’s no doubt in my mind that I can be ready on April 27. Well, maybe there’s a little doubt. Okay, maybe I am terrified. In reality I am extremely anxious and I feel I should be running on a bike in the pool because 39 weeks is not nearly enough time.

And with that confession, I am off to bed because as triathletes like to say: I have to be up at 4 AM.