First of all I would like to thank my supportive and ardent fan club for having so much faith in my ability to transcend reason and physical limitations and pull off doing a Half Ironman 2 weeks after running a marathon. I’m sure I could finish but I don’t think it would be pretty. Thanks to the tri-athletes who gave me their informed opinions, all of which pointed to not doing it.

The reason I even considered this race is because my Women of Iron biker friends* are considering doing the AquaBike race on that day. This is just the swim and bike portion of the Half IronMan. When I looked at the registration price I almost choked – it is $160. For that same amount of money you can toss in a run, too so I was looking at the volume discount! Hey that makes sense, doesn’t it?

The other reason I wanted to do it is because it doesn’t involve a wetsuit. I have this weird wetsuit phobia going on that is a real impediment to trying to find triathlons in this area. Most of the water around here is snow melt or freezing cold Pacific Ocean water (it ain’t all the tropics, my friends). There is a series of Tri for Fun sprint distance triathlons and I may just stick with those for the foreseeable future.

The reason I’m not going to do it is that I’m not that strong and I am not really putting in enough training to pull it off. Part of the reason I’m not putting in the training is because I have been on the verge of an overuse injury for 2 months and I have to be careful. As a couple of people pointed out, if I didn’t get injured in the training I would likely suffer an injury from the event and that’s just no good at all.

For now I’m going to focus on my marathon and remember that I am going for a PR here and that I will probably be sore for several days and then recovering for a couple of weeks.

Thanks again for your votes of confidence and your informed opinions and your support in general.

*not Iron as in IronMan, just Iron as in Fe as in one of these women is a scientist.