Rachel Cosgrove's Online Journal: I signed up for an Ironman!

14 weeks ago I made the decision that I would complete an Ironman next year- that means I will swim 2.4 miles, followed by a 112 mile bike and finish with a marathon on July 22nd, 2007 in Lake Placid, NY. My goal is to complete it in 12:30 hours.

I haven't quite wrapped my head around this yet and how I will be physically able to do this but I know that if I train my body, anything is possible. So, I started to figure out my plan of attack and wrote out my periodized plan for a whole year. I am currently in my General Prep Phase and had one of my trainers(who works at my gym) evaluate me for any imbalances. From this evaluation I found that I needed to spend some time stretching and strengthening certain muscle groups to make sure that my body is completely balanced and I will not get injured going into this high volume of training. My specific training starts the first week of December.

So for the past 14 weeks and for the next month I have been lifting weights three days a week, stretching and foam rolling everynight and I have been doing some interval cardio sessions to drop some body fat before starting the long endurance workouts(where it will be hard to drop any bodyfat). I have also been doing one long run a week to slowly build up my mileage on my run. I am planning to do the LA Marathon in March of next year and as of this week am up to 11 miles of running and feeling pretty good. Over the next month I want to continue losing some more body fat and getting my body strong, flexible, balanced and ready to start my specific Ironman training. Here is a pic of me training in the gym this past Friday.