Will I? Won't I?

Silly question. Of course I will. For a while, I talked about "thinking about, considering, possibly" signing up for Lake Placid Ironman 2009." Then, somehow, with no conscious thought process, I heard myself saying " When I'm training ...," or "At Placid ..." I guess somewhere along the line, I made the decision. Funny how that happens, eh?

There was a few days of doubt about 10 weeks ago when our beloved German Shepherd Sayla died suddenly. Long story, but after a period of progressively worsening stomach problems, she developed torsion, where the stomach twists and we rushed her to the vet. After stabilizing her, the vet felt that given the previous history, there may be other things wrong and encouraged us to take her to a veterinary hospital for further tests to see whether surgery was even worth trying. even then, surgery is only sometimes successful. We were quoted a rough estimate of $6-7,000 for the operation. The moment that we realised that we simply couldn't afford that was perhaps one of the worst of my life. Truly, the decision to put her to sleep was far more to do with the seriousness of the surgery, the way she hadn't responded to treatment over the past few weeks and the possibility of some more serious underlying cause. But I can't help thinking ... if only we had the money. How can I possibly considering training for and equipping myself for an Ironman when I didn't spend that money on my baby? How selfish am I? I know that's the wrong way to look at the situation, but it does creep in and for a while I really had to think hard about whether or not I wanted to do this. In the end, we know it was the right thing to do for Sayla and that the decision--while traumatic--was one of our obligations as a parent of a dog. We promised her that she would be honored through our future dogs, and held her as she left us.

Lord - bit of a self-indulgent interlude there. I'm writing a blog for goodness sake - the entire thing is self-indulgent!

Anyhoo. Here I am on the Wednesday before I fly up to Lake Placid to volunteer and sign up on Monday for 2009. I'm kinda calm. Nothing seems particularly real yet. I'm a little worried that so many people will re-up for 2009 that I will miss out, in which case I don't have a plan B.

The photo here is from 2006 and taken on the Lake Placid Ironman marathon course. On Flickr, I have this labeled as "The closest I will ever come to doing an Ironman." Little did I know!