New Year, New Goals

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, Amber and I definitely did. We spent some time in Saskatchewan with Amber's family and it was a lot of fun. Christmas is always a time to be with the ones you love and eat and drink to excess, I sure did my fair share of that. On the long drive home it looked like Amber had a lot on her mind and I was doing my best to try and get her to open up but I think she needed to sort some things out on that trip. After about 10hrs locked in the car together she had a breakthrough, she was going to do the Death Race. I new she wanted to do it I just wasn't sure if she wanted to do it in 2010. Neither of us are big on New Year's Resolutions; that implies something is wrong in your life and you want to change it, but we are both living the life of our dreams. New Year's Goals now that is something we like to set every year and work to achieve them everyday. I was very, very happy she had found a "big goal" for the new year and I could see a huge weight was lifed off her shoulders. The Death Race seems crazy to me it's a 125km run over two major mountain passes and some incredibly tough, tough terrain. I know if anyone can do it, she can.

It was great for me too because I had a tentative schedule of races I wanted to do next year but I couldn't really commit to anything until I was sure what she wanted to do. Now that she felt like she was going to commit herself to ultramarathoning this year I could feel like I was going to commit myself to doing Ironman again. I did have the thought of going to Kona this year but I think I would rather save that for 2011 and qualify at an earlier season Ironman like Coeur d'Alene. Also 2011 has the added benefit of racing against Lance again, I got him in the Boston marathon but I think he definitely has the advantage in an Ironman. It'll be nice to just be there when he is there and see him smoke the bike course.

Here's what I've come up with for 2010, I want to stick with the theme of staying local and supporting races in and around our community. There is a great group of tough triathletes here in GP and it makes such a difference to go out for a long hard swim or ride when there are other people willing to go out there and suffer with you.

May 9th- Brian Harms 8K, Grande Prairie
May 23rd- GP Press Run 21K, Grande Prairie
June 6th- Mountainview Tri (Olympic), Hinton
June 20th- Grande Prairie Tri (Sprint)
July 4th- Great White North 1/2 IM, Stony Plain
July 18th- Peach Classic Tri (Olympic), PentictonJuly 18th- 24th- Penticton Training Camp
August 29th- Ironman Canada
November 7th- New York Marathon


It's a pretty full schedule but I'm really excited to be doing Ironman again and having a week in Penticton with Amber and friends just swimming, riding and running. The Peach Classic will be a great kick off to the week and there is some very, very good competion that shows up so it'll keep me sharp and pushing the whole time. I think riding the Ironman course a couple times will be great too, I know I've done it a few times already but I'm hoping to take my cycling to another level this year and be in the 5hr- 5:10 range.

That's it for the year, I have a challenging work schedule as well but it looks like Amber and I are going to be spending a lot of time in Jasper and Grande Cache so it's a year I'm really looking forward to!