Catching the Ironman Bug

I was on my way home yesterday when I received the following email:

Tempe, AZ – Less than 200 general entry spots remain for the 2008 Ford Ironman Arizona Triathlon, set to take place on November 23, 2008. The event is expected to be sold out by Monday so athletes interested in competing in the event are urged to register to avoid being closed out. Athletes can register at http://www.ironmanarizona.com/.

Why would I even consider this? Well, lately my resistance to the Ironman bug has been lowered by several things:

• I competed in the Couples Sprint Tri and the Austin Tri (Olympic) in 2007.
• After 6 weeks of training for the swim, my swim form seemed to come back after 25 years of neglect.
• I am already training for the Austin Marathon. My runs during my Tri’s were so bad that I figured that if I trained for a marathon it would help.
• But I think what really did it was that I had recently begun listening to Triathlon Podcasts like Tri Talk, SimplyStu, Zen and the Art of Triathlon, Get your Geek On, Jetpack Show and Ironman Talk. Actually I have listened to almost every episode of these Podcasts in the past few weeks. I have enjoyed listening and reading about the journeys of others and decided to take the journey myself…..

So I clicked the link and in a matter of minutes I received my Registration Confirmation email, now there is no backing out.