Happy Monday Y’all! I’m sure many of you are headed back to work or school after a nice hiatus through the holidays. I unfortunately did work through the holidays but still managed to squeeze in all the holiday fun I wanted (see yesterday’s post) which has put quite the damper on my typical healthy eating and regular exercise routine. Originally I had planned to kickstart my workouts at the beginning of December after taking a short break to recover from the marathon, as I mentioned in my Offseason Training post. That worked great till about the week of Christmas…. So here I am, ready to kick off the new year with a new training program but this time with a new goal.

This new goal is something I have wanted to accomplish for a long time. And I especially wanted to accomplish before turning 25. So this is the year. I am training for my first ever FULL IRONMAN!!! Thats right, that 140.6mile race consisting of a 2.4mile swim, 112mile bike, and 26.2mile run. I signed up over Christmas (Merry Christmas to me) to compete in Ironman Cozumel November 29th, 2015. And you might ask why before 25, well the answer is simple. 25 is when I move into the big girls league. Racing at 24, my age group is still small and tends to be a little less competitive but come 25 and beyond, the numbers and the competition greatly increase.

So now comes the hard part…training. How in the world do you train for a race this long? How long do you train for this? Should I complete all the distances before going into that day? Should I do a half iron as a warm up for this race? The questions go on and on. So for now, although as I talk to more people this may change, I am going to start my training now. I have found a 36week program online from Trifuel (anyone used it before??) that has gotten good reviews from others who have used it before with the only caveat to add a little extra distance to the long runs. I know 36weeks puts me starting the week of March 23rd so in the time leading up to then, I am going to work on building a base. I plan to pick a half marathon to do in the month of March as kind of my season opener so I will train for that plus adding in some miles on the bike and in the pool as cross-training. However, up till March, my main focus will the half marathon and strength training.

And since training for an Ironman is soooo many grueling hours, I figured why not reward myself?! I have created a jar that I will be putting a dollar in for every workout that I do leading up to the race. That way, when the race is all said and done at the end of November and I am an IRONMAN, I will be able to treat myself to something nice. Not sure what it will be yet but once I figure it out I will let you know.

So there you have it, my 2015 goal. What are your goals for 2015? Please share in the comments below.

LET’S GET THIS training PARTY STARTED!!!