Ramping It Up - 300 days to Go

I am not under any illusions about what I have committed myself to. An Ironman race is no walk in the park. It is long and it is exhausting. Preparing for a race of this distance (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) is going to take a lot of planning. The first thing I started to do was increase my swim. A normal swim for me was 850 meters, just over a half mile or 36 laps in an olympic size pool.
So I added an extra few laps one morning and I was at 1,000 meters. I was excited until I realized how far I needed to swim in meters. 2.4 miles is @ 4,000 meters. So I increased to 1,200 meters. After a few weeks, I increased it to 1,500 meters.
(Do you count each lap?)
No need to. I know how fast I swim. I've timed it for months.
100 meters takes me 2 minutes
500 meters takes me 10 minutes
1,000 meters takes me 20 minutes.
1,500 meters takes me 30 minutes.
So, 2,000 meters takes 40 minutes
(Who cares how fast you swim?) .

There is a time cut off at the Ironman. I have to be out of the water in less that 2 hours 20 minutes.
(So by your account, you should finish in 90 minutes)
Except, I'm not swimming this race in a pool. I'm swimming it on the Caribbean Ocean. Sure I have swam in the Hudson and I've swam in the Caribbean when I did the Bermuda Tri, but I have never gone this far before. When I did the Half Ironman, it took me 42 minutes to go 1.4 miles, but I got to wear a wet suit. This swim does not permit wetsuits.



Wearing my wet suit, with my wife
and son before the start of a triathlon in 2007.
This swim was only 1,500 meters.