The Ironbug Bites

My husband has been my constant companion for fourteen years, almost all of which I have done triathlons. Yet even with trucking me around to races, watching me train, and standing by the finish lines, he has only been tempted to try a race once. That was about five years ago when he did the Blue Lake Sprint distance tri, and that has been his first and last triathlon. I'm sure it didn't help that what was supposed to be a half mile swim got mismarked into the Olympic course and came out at almost a mile, and that swimming is his least favorite sport among the three. More than one sprint triathlete came out of the water sputtering and cursing that morning! But it's just never been his thing. Until now.

The other day, I caught him watching the St. Croix half-Ironman on TV (or, as we now apparently call it, an Ironman 70.3 - ah, marketing!). Then he was surfing on the Ironman website, looking at 70.3 races. And suddenly over dinner one evening it was "I think I might like to do a half-Ironman for my 45th birthday". The Ironbug bites.

I'm not sure exactly why all of the lovely Olympic and Sprint Tri's here in the Pacific Northwest have never beckoned to him, but suddenly the prospect of going over twice that distance does. Perhaps it's the gigantic challenge of it all, or watching the throngs at IMFL, the race week enthusiasm, or just having a big goal out there to mark an age milestone (for his 40th birthday, we biked a 100 miles to the coast with a group of friends), but all of a sudden he's in the pool a couple of times a week and talking of biking back and forth to work when the weather warms.

I'm ecstatic of course. For one, because I've always longed to share this sport together (we met when we both were deeply immersed in skydiving, something that's been impossible to keep up as parents, but was great fun to do together), and for another because it'll be nice to have him as a training partner some of the time, and also maybe he'll get what drives me a little better, especially once he tackles the 70.3. And of course, when the Ironbug bites me again, he'll understand!