Howdy!
It's been some time since I last posted something here on my blog. The past two years have been very busy. Sean and Sawyer, now almost 4 and 2 years old, kept us on our feet day and night. Since Sanja and I are working full time, and we have no family in this part of the world, it hasn't always been easy to go out and train. Luckily, our boys now reached an age where they like to play together. This is awesome because they build a deep relationship with each other and also because suddenly we have more time to think about new goals - and here's mine: Next Stop Kona: 2017!
The plan is to qualify next year at Ironman Canada in Whistler and then head over to Kona to beat my previous best of 10:06:53 set in 2010! You can read about it over at Fiera Race Team. In 2012, I was again able to race in Kona, after I qualified at Ironman Cozumel 2011 with a third place in my age group (M30-34), but I wasn't able to finish the race (you can read about it here). The year 2012 was a pretty busy year for Sanja and me since Sean was born in August and I also defended my PhD thesis just a month before the race. Anyway, since then, I haven't been able to train continuously and decided to not train competitively anymore. I took up trail running and just ran for the sheer joy of being outdoors and moving - no pace time, no stress, only running when I feel like it. It was a great time and I was able to finish a couple of very nice trail run adventures. Since the end of last year though, I started feeling that "itch" again and visualized myself racing triathlons whenever I was working out - and today was the day when I decided to give the Ironman World Championships in Kona another try!
Alright, what's the plan? Well, it's a long term plan - but long term planning, commitment and dedication is something I am good at, and I am really looking forward to this! Tomorrow is Ironman Canada in Whistler and as soon as they accept registration for 2017, I will sign up. Then I will have a long one year preparation period. At this point, I am not entirely sure what it will look like but I will post the details here on my blog once I know. So stay tuned!
Happy training,
Stefan
