Day 0

To give you some background...A bit of a tradition started for us last year. My husband decided to 'celebrate!?!' his 30th birthday he would ride a crazy bike ride called the Terrible Two. The Terrible Two is a 200 mile bicycle ride that his dad put together years ago. His dad did this to try to create the most difficult double century and by many accounts he accomplished it. This is the madness that I married into.

Our tradition came to be over dinner one night when my husband, Ryan, asked me what I planned on doing to celebrate my 30th birthday. Now celebrate is a very strange choice of words if you ask me. He is really asking me 'how would you like to suffer' and somehow in his athletic mind this translates to celebrate. I said I would do the Double Dipsea a 14 mile run with 4500 feet of climbing. Ryan's response to this was that the quad dipsea was closer to my birthday and I should try that WHAT?? His expectation was 28 miles and 9000 feet of climbing. That threw the whole dipsea idea out the window. Ryan quickly learned that his dismissal of my goal was hurtful and frustrating to me. So when I settled on the goal of a half ironman (who knows where the idea came from) he did not think to say 'maybe you should challenge yourself with a full ironman,' although I am sure that the thought did enter his mind.

To train for this event I am following a training book that I purchased. I will be swimming and running Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays cycling Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays and blogging often. I also threw in that I would not drink alcohol or Diet Pepsi. I think the real reason we do this is to go into 30 the healthiest that we can. Maybe it takes the sting out of being done with my 20s??