Reflecting and planning

2 weeks ago, I finished IMC. Now what?

I've embraced the post-Ironman recovery period and pretty much focused on catching up on the to-do lists at home and work. Today I went for a 5k run and felt good while I was out, but afterwards I was surprised at how fatigued I was. I guess I'll still be taking it easy for another week.

Shifting from 10 months of always training to suddenly not training has been interesting. I find myself wondering what run I have to do today, or thinking about pool schedules while I run errands. Training has become so hard wired into my daily thought processes that I have to force myself to focus on the downtime as much as would focus on a workout plan. To get an idea of just how much training I did, I pulled up my log from November to race day - here it is:

Bike - Commuter	132 miles	10:05:00	11.14 mph avg
Bike - Mountain	100.16	11:12:00	8.94 mph avg
Bike - Road	1265.9 Miles	83:25:55	15.17 mph avg
Bike - Trainer	720.04 Miles	47:55:23	15.03 mph avg
Run	818.63 Miles	119:48:20	8:47 per mile avg
Swim	99400 Yards	39:19:58	2:22 per 100 yds avg
Total Time	311 Hours, 46 Mins

Some folks worked out more than that, some less. I'm pretty sure I won't see workout volumes that high until again until the kids are out of the house. My next Ironman will likely be in 2020 :-)

What's next? I've thought about this quite a bit. The Seattle marathon comes to mind, but it falls on a bad week. My next long race will likely be Nookachamps, that way I have a reason to train through the winter. Cyclocross looks like fun, so do winter tri's and Biathlon. The only thing I know at the moment is I don't want to ride my road bike, and the dirt is calling me. There's a great off road duathlon in Bellingham in a few weeks, maybe I'll do that. I don't have a real plan yet, but it will come along.