Iceman, #2 on the way, and much more

I can't believe how long it's been since I've written a blog on this site. I am really going to try and be better about it in 2013. Things get busy when you're trying to be a good husband and father as well as teacher, coach, and athlete. Let's just say blogging hassn't been a priority. I have had a few people ask me recently to start it back up so I'm going to take another shot at it.

Where to start...it's been an awesome year watching my daughter Kennedy grow and mature (she's now 16 mo. old). It never ceases to amaze me how much of a personality such a little girl can have. We are also expecting #2 in May 2013 so we are prepping Kennedy to be a big sister. She was asking for a training partner more similar in size so we thought we'd deliver:)

Triathlon wise it really was a good year (All-American for the 4th time). I started off by winning the Starkermann in Gaylord. I got taken off course by the motorcycle while leading the Bayshore 10k, but was on sub 34 min. pace so I was happy with where the body was at. I won the Bass Festival 5k after riding 60 miles beforehand. Syracuse 70.3 went well. I was 6th age grouper overall and at one point in the race was in 1st. The run is still my achilles heel. I need to continue to find ways to drop time and get in that low 1:2x range off the bike if I'm ever going to be 1st amateur. I repeated at East Jordan and took 2nd at Mark Mellon to Aaron Bachman. I gave him a run for his money (literally as we brought some prize money to Mark Mellon this year...going up for next year so join us!) and led off the bike by a little over a minute. I had probably my best race of the year again at Petoskey Tri. I was firing on all cylinders and finally broke 36 min. off the bike for an Olympic distance race running a mid 35. Steelhead was another high age group finish, but ran 1:29 instead of the sub 1:25 I had planned on which would have had me top 3 overall amateurs. From there I pretty much called it a season and started prepping for the GR marathon and Iceman. Both of those races went well considering my lack of preparation, but it just gets to be a long season once school starts back up and now that we have Kennedy and with coaching and all. No complaints here thought as life is great! Rachel continues to be wife/mother of the year (not to mention her job as a funeral director) and I couldn't do anything I do without her support.

Basketball practice starts on Monday so I'm really looking forward to that. We have a very good shot at winning the league so it's going to be a fun year. I am doing some very light training at the moment and have been sprinkling in some roller skiing to get ready for the xc ski season. I'll also be playing a decent amount of basketball once we get rolling. I have decided my first day of 2013 training will be December 17th. That way I can get in some solid work over our 2 weeks of Xmas vacation and that should set me up for the real work to begin after that. The whole goal of 2013 is simple...Kona!!! I will be qualifying at Ironman Lake Placid the end of July and everything I do training and racing will have that race in mind. There is no doubt in my mind I can accomplish this task, but it is going to take a lot of work...work I'm prepared to do.

Lastly, I have a couple more open slots for coaching in 2013 so if interested please email me at dave@jrmtraining.com

Please follow along...it's going to be an exciting year!