Catching up!

Yeah, it’s been a while, and the funny thing is that my training is going great.

Let’s hit the key points, though:

At 11:16 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Monday, September 11, I successfully registered for Ironman Wisconsin 2007. This is very scary, but very exciting, too. The following Sunday I went to an end-of-triathlon-season party, which included a couple who themselves had just done IM Wisconsin 2006. It came out, of course, that I’d signed up for IM Wisconsin, even though I’ve never done a triathlon. There were a lot of arched eyebrows, I can tell you—until our host said I’d engaged Steve Bentley as my coach.

I’m now “panicing early”: every missed work-out seems to take me away from goal of finishing IM Wisconsin—so I’ve gotten better at finding the time. On Sunday, Coach Steve said, “Congratulations on a good week.”

I’ve learned that business travel is not good for Ironman training. A short trip to Ottawa in aid of some work for that city’s transit property left me with no time to train.

Two weeks ago, walking out of my house to do a bike work-out, my plastic Look cleats slipped on the wet painted wood of the steps. As I fell, I prayed, “Please, let me fall on my ass”; but my prayers weren’t answered, and I fell to my right, digging a nice deep gash in my right arm, a gash that got mildly infected; and straining my right wrist.

The wrist I took care of: didn’t use it for a few days, iced it several times a day; and it repaid me by healing nicely. But pain below the wrist, in my upper hand, persisted; and indeed, has gotten worse. Yesterday, my doc poked around, raising even more pain, and gave me the preliminary diagnosis of a non-displaced fractured metacarpal. Not serious; but it means weight work-outs, which I have a problem doing in the first place, will be tough.

One thing that's kind of exciting—heck, very exciting is that “Coach Bogie” and I are driving to Madison, Wisconsin, this weekend (October 7-10) to do the bike course. We keep hearing such fearsome descriptions of it that we decided to see for ourselves. If it really is hell, we’ll know, and will train accordingly; if it’s just like the Oak Ridges Moraine, then I’ll know just where to train! Indeed, I found that Dane County (of which Madison is the seat) is “glaciated and has a landscape of low rolling hills with intermittent moraines”—so my hope is not bootless!