Looking (Way) Ahead

With all of my major races for the year already behind me I will be taking it easy for the rest of the summer. This is partly to let my body recover from six months of Ironman training, but just as much to give myself a chance to take care of all the projects, chores and other tasks that I neglected this spring. "Taking it easy" means no races and only base-level light training through August. While I'm committed to giving myself this rest, it sure doesn't stop me from thinking about my future races.
In fact, over the past few years I've learned that when I force myself to take a long period of near-total rest after a major event it feeds into my motivation to set new goals and come back strong. It's almost like self-imposed cabin fever. By forcing myself to lay low longer than necessary and picking "start dates" to come back to training I emerge from the recovery period completely energized and focused on the task at hand.

Which brings me to my current plan. Looking at these goals I realize that there must be a proportional relationship between recovery period and scope of the future plans. My "rest-of-the-summer" recovery has resulted in a set of training goals that will be measured in years instead of months! I've never truly thought this far out in my training. I know things may change, but here is how my major goals stand for now:

Remainder of 2011:

• Rest through the end of the summer
• Work on building run mileage in late fall

2012: Major Goal: Sub 3:30 Marathon (PR: 3:31:46, set in 2007)

• First Training Goal: Houston Half Marathon, January
• Second Training Goal: Early Summer 70.3 Triathlon (Half-Iron) Possibly Boise, June 
• Third Training Goal: Missoula Half-Marathon (run FAST)
• Major Race: Chicago Marathon, October. Goal: sub 3:30
• October/November Recovery

2013: Ironman Number 2

• Major Race: Another Ironman! (Coeur d'Alene in June or Canada in August)
• Focus on being more efficient on the bike, sub 7:00 bike split (was 7:10 this year)

 Again, that's a long way to look into the future, but it seems like a good plan with plenty of training time and enough variety to keep me focused. And the idea of training really hard next year to try to go sub 3:30 at one of the largest races in the country is an electrifying thought. Stay tuned!