So IM looms far on the horizon next year.  Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about it but I’m very much starting from ground zero this time.  I haven’t swam nor run since IMWI ‘06, I haven’t biked in any kind of training fashion since the Spring of 2007.  I’m thirty pounds over race weight and horribly out of shape.  I was playing with the neighbor kids just yesterday and they had me huffing and puffing just running around the back yard.  It’s a sad shape of affairs, lemme tell ya!

But for the first time in a long time, I’m excited to start training again.  I’m still going to be taking these next few weeks very easy/off as my parents will be in town for the next few weeks.  There is just no way that any kind of dieting is happening while my mom is here cooking various yummy things for me.  But when they’re gone, I plan on hitting the diet fairly hard and working out consistently.

My loose plans are:

• Lose weight.  I’m still debating how I want to approach this.  I could either tackle this one really hard and shed most of the weight off in a couple months.  Or do this slowly over the winter.  Each has its pros and cons, but I’m probably leaning more towards the prior.  I think I can drop twenty pounds by New Years?
• Swim and spin.  I hope to get most of my cardio done in the pool and on the bike which aren’t so bone jarring and hopefully will ease my body back into action more so than running.  Nothing too strenuous right off the bat.  I think I could probably handle an hour of very easy swimming or biking a day off the bat.  It’s far easier for me to coast through these two activites than it is to do so running.
• Address potential running issues before starting to run.  I have “glass legs” and tend to develop achilles problems easily, especially when starting out.  I’ve also had a pretty consistent history of IT band problems.  I plan on strengthening and stretching my calves to hopefully address any achilles issues.  I’m also planning a regimine of IT band stretching and massage along with trying to strengthen my gluteus medius, which I think has been helpful for me in the past.

Once I have a few weeks of the above under my belt, I think I’ll be able to add running into the mix.  Hopefully, I’ll be up to doing somewhere between 8-10 hours a week by mid-Winter.  Then slowly ramp up that volume as Spring comes.  If all goes well, I hope to be in 1/2 IM shape by early Spring.

So that’s the plan.  I have a few more weeks of the good life (although honestly, the novelty of being able to eat whatever I want lost its charm long time ago – now I do it mostly out of laziness) and then it’s back to it.  Seriously, this time… No really!  Seriously. :)