I want to do a triathlon. I signed up for a half-Ironman.

Meet Haley.

Said no logical person ever. Since having Haley, I have gradually moved from reasonably in shape to fat bastard. It has gotten to the point that our doctor is threatening to put me onto Lipitor. At 33 years old, I am way to young for that.

I finally hit my limit last month when Sarah and I went to the Dominican Republic for our five year anniversary. We decided to go zip lining and they had a max weight of 250 pounds. I barely squeaked underneath that mark while at the same time hitting my record high for weight. That, the man boobs, the being winded walking up the stairs, and the below picture all led me to one conclusion. I am a fat bastard. In this picture, I am 50 pounds overweight. I need to lose the weight and get back into shape. Partially for me, but for Sarah and Haley too. I need to be healthy to be the best husband and father that I can.

Fat Mark

 Having a goal has always been extremely helpful for me when I need to do something seemingly daunting. Something like losing 20% of my body mass. We decided that training to do another triathlon might be just what I needed to get there. It has all the cardio that you can imagine and I love swimming and riding (we'll discuss running later). We agreed that if I can get to the point of doing a half-Ironman, that I would get a real tri bike for the race. We also agrees that if somehow I ever get fit enough to do a full Ironman and can qualify for Kona, we would take a long vacation to Hawaii.

I spent a few nights looking up triathlons in the Denver-area and found a few that looked interesting. I put them on my short list to cross against our calendar. Most local races are Sprint and Olympic length races, with a few XTERRA races in the mountains. One local race that was off my radar was the Boulder half-Ironman. It is at the end of June, so there would be no time to train for a race of that intensity. I did the reasonable thing and didn't put it on my list of potential races.

Enter BJW. Three weeks ago while zoning out watching TV, the 2013 Kona Ironman World Championship comes onto the screen. We decided to watch it and the idea of racing an Ironman just swept over me. I spent the next few days debating as to whether or not I could ever get into shape for a race like that. Which led to looking at the Ironman website... and one thing leads to another... I told Sarah that I wanted to do a half-Ironman. With serious doubt and concern in her response, Sarah said "If you think you can do it, go for it". That night I signed up for the half-Ironman in Austin, Texas on October 26th. That was last Wednesday.

By the end of the night, we had flights and hotel rooms booked, an email to my parent's to see if they would come with us to help take care of Haley,and a massive amount of "Oh Shit. What have I just signed up for". I was now financially vested into this race and I had only started running a week ago. Not to mention, I had not run more that two miles in over a year. I spent a few nights scrubbing through Google to find a good training program, which I found here. I started it Monday and it's been properly hard work, but not crushing. Looking at it in more detail though has led me to determine that it is not a program for training, so much as competing. So here we go!

Given I had now signed up for a half-Ironman I needed to get a real tri bike. After spending a few days searching for a good priced, proper bike I found an online shop with new, old stock bikes. I looked at eBay, Craigslist, and just about every other place to buy a used bike, but being a wookie once again made the used bike search fruitless. Thankfully I was able to find this site to get a heavily discounted new bike.

Enter BJW round 2: Having told Sarah I would need to get a new bike, I just assumed I was free to go ahead and get one. Assuming of course I had done my research and found one for a good price, that was reasonably cheap. Yesterday (Wednesday) I bought a 2011 Specialized Transition Expert. Apparently I did not have the full go ahead, so I managed to get myself in trouble. Note to the other guys out there: just because the wife says it's okay, always double check before clicking 'buy'.

The bike should be here next week. I will need to get it fit for the Aero position, but thankfully that is all that I should need to do to it. I will keep you updated with pictures once I get it built.