Last year, like other years that we’ve done IronMan Lake Placid, we experienced our traditional Panic Sets In moment. That can’t happen this year. It simply can’t. We need to avoid that at all costs.

In 2009, Kathryn wasn’t able to complete IronMan Lake Placid—whether it was her work, or that things needed to get done around the house, or that she just wasn’t that into it, something else always got in the way that prevented her from training. And that hurt, come race day.

I’ve said this before… for some reason, I still have to train much harder than her in order to be able to compete. Yes, I’ve gotten faster than her on the bike. But still, overall, the ROI (return on investment) for her training seems to be much better than mine.

In 2008 I felt that even if ...

This past year of triathlon was amazing. I improved my overall fitness, and my cycling tremendously and that had a significant impact on my overall results. IronMan Lake Placid? Better by 90 minutes. IronMan Muskoka 70.3? Better by about 20 minutes.

And, while it was amazing, it was very difficult.

There were times when i wanted to throw it all away—training every weekend with Kathryn, with my brother and his wife, with Greg, with whomever… I was ready to give it all up on at least one occasion, and I know that Kathryn was too. In fact, we did give it all up, at least once.

I think I’ve figured out at least part of the reason why.

2009 saw Kathryn and I compete in IronMan Lake Placid on July 27 and IronMan 70.3 Muskoka on September 13. I won’t get into the results—those ...

Annual tradition.

That’s all I can put it down to. Annual tradition.

Spring arrives and we panic because we haven’t been training enough for the races we have planned. We have gone through this every year since 2007. Every spring we freak out and panic that we are not going to be ready. That we’ll fail. That we’ll hurt ourselves. That we won’t finish the race.

And then, we train.

And we look at what we did the year before, we realize that we made it happen last year, and we’ll make it happen again this year. Spurred on by our realization that we’re toast if we don’t get a move on, we kick into high gear, and get the hours in.

And so it goes. I’m logging all of my training miles at Daily Mile—a service I found that ...

Here’s how 2008 went down. I got through IronMan Muskoka 70.3 but I was a little disappointed with my result. I wanted more from myself. I felt like I peaked too early in the season—probably at this year’s Tupper Lake TinMan.

I trained hard last year—personal trainer, triathlon coach, weights, flexibility workouts, spent a lot of time on the bike, teaching classes, all of it. I felt more ready for one of our training races than I did for the one that counted, and that just doesn’t sit well with me.

By the time the race that mattered came around, my training had already started to dwindle, weight slowly crept back on (partly because of my speaking schedule—delivering talks at conferences with awesome food, and still trying to work on client work back home, means that my workouts suffer and I put on ...

This isn’t the post I thought I’d be writing, but I am.

I am not feeling the way I should be feeling, but I am.

Yes, I successfully completed IronMan Muskoka 70.3, and yes, it was a very challenging course, so in reality I should just be happy to have crossed the finish line—almost 40 people of the 1300 participants didn’t finish.

I know that I improved significantly over my performance at IronMan Lake Placid last year, and I’m happy with that. Overall, I felt better prepared and in better shape.

But the bottom line is that, for me, my performance on race day just wasn’t good enough. I trained my ass off for close to 6 months. Others that were competing with me (my wife and brother and sister-in-law in particular) all said that I would do way better than they would ...