Now Life Will Never Be The Same

It's hard to describe the feeling you have of welcoming your son to the world, I have never been more happy or tired before in my entire life. On February 12th after a long, long labour Amber and I welcomed a new member to our little family- Ryder Darin Hunter a healthy 7lbs 8ozs and he has been a handful. I told Amber that I can see why most people decide to start having a family earlier than we decided to, my ability to function on 3-4 hours sleep is not as good as it was in my 20s. That being said I know I am better prepared emotionally and financially to support a family now than I was in my 20s. It's been a great week with Ryder and I have to give a lot of credit to my beautiful wife for taking on the work of raising a newborn, without her determination to have a child last year he probably wouldn't be here- thank you babe. It's is such an amazing experience to hold your son and know that he is full of promise and potential. I know that the excitement is just getting started but I'm so incredibly overwhelmed with the idea and responsibility of being a Dad.

As for my training, well it's pretty much impossible to train for an Ironman on little to no sleep so I feel like I'm starting from scratch again. One week of no sleep and another week of recovering from it has left me with a little bit of work to do. I can see now why a lot of triatheles take a few years off Ironman training until their children are a little older and more self sufficient. Amber's done a great job at recognizing that I need to sleep and she has taken Ryder out of our room when he needs to eat in the middle of the night. I'm starting to feel a little more normal this week and I managed to do a 1500m TT in the pool in 23:00, not bad but still some work to do there. The biggest challenge I'm finding is getting on the bike consistently- I'm still only able to fit in 2 rides a week and come March I'd like to get that up to at least 4 times a week. Running is going okay I don't have any more achillies issues and the time off has helped my knee, I'm not race ready but I know that a few runs a week and I'll respond very quickly.

March is the month when the 'serious' training begins and I have to really get to work in the following 90 days to incorporate some bricks, intervals, and longer rides/ runs. I have plans to continue the 2hr+ rides on Sunday and 13 mile+ runs Saturday but I think I'm going to start running after every ride just to get the legs used to running after riding. The base training in the past two months has been really beneficial and I'm feeling a lot fitter and ready to attack the hard training that's ahead in the coming months. We'll see how realistic my plans are but with the great family support I have I know that I'll have an incredible Ironman in Coeur d"Alene.