12 IronMan’s a month for 12 months – DONE!

It’s that quiet time between Christmas and New Year. At this time of year, you often find the TV & newspapers (or news websites – that’s how I get my news these days) reflecting on the last 12 months.

In some respects therefore, I feel obliged to write a quick post reflecting on my 12 months of training for challenges and fundraising for JDRF.

I’ve never been one to dwell too much on the past, I’m usually thinking about the next new thing, so I won’t spend too long naval gazing…

My swim this morning marked the completion of my 12xIronMan challenge.

It’s all logged here for you to see and breaks down as follows:

69 times in the pool for a total of 58.95 miles – an average of just under 5 miles a month.
104 times on the bike for a total of 1,741 miles – an average of 145 miles a month.
117 runs for a total of 484 miles – an average of just over 40 miles a month.

Looking at it like this, I’m probably most surprised by the running – it’s my least favourite discipline, but I’ve been running more times than I’ve ridden my bike!!! The times when I can’t ride my bike because of inclement weather can be supplemented with a run instead – which has obviously happened a few times!

That points to the one thing I’ve learnt from this challenge. By breaking it down into smaller goals, and trying to make sure I ran at least twice a week, swam twice a week and rode twice a week, it soon became less of a challenge and more of a habit.

They say (whoever they are) when talking about diet’s that its better not to think of a diet as a fad but to make the change as part of your lifestyle. I think this is what exercise has become for me. The goals of Triathlons and other organised events give me something to aim for, but just being in the habit of excercising most days makes it so much easier.

With this in mind, I think I intend to carry on trying to do an IronMan a month into 2013.

For the first four months, this will be complicated by the increase in running miles I will need to do for the London Marathon. After that, I’ll need to do that amount of training anyway, if I am to complete the Half OutLaw Triathlon I’ve signed up for in July.

Both of these require me to do the other thing that I have managed to succeed at in 2012 – and that is to stay injury free! When I started doing this in January of this year, I secretly thought the biggest hurdle to completion would be an injury that stopped me training. Luckily, I’ve steered clear of such complications and I hope that will continue into next year….

Navel gazing over – keep looking forward!