IMMD? That would be nuts!

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my very first triathlon.  Today, I'm racing in my second Ironman in five weeks, my fourth in just over five years, my seventh marathon, and my XXXth triathlon.

Nuts, right?

Yep.

No denying it.  What I'm about to do is a very foolish thing.  But that's kind of the point.  In no particular order, here were my reasons for signing up for Ironman Maryland.

1. It's opportunistic - I get a second Ironman finish essentially for the training price of one.
2. It extends the extraordinary experience I had in the weeks leading up to and through IMMT.
3. IMMD coincides with the IM Cozumel training weekend, so all my teammates training for IMCOZ (and IMAZ) will be in town, and I get to spend the weekend with them. 
4. Since IMMD 2015 is to be a team race, there will be loads of my Z-mates out there.  It'll be a team race without being a team race!
5. I am a ridiculously boring sensible person (see IMMT planning).  It's good for me and kind of fun to try and break out of that and do something that's a little nuts.

It all started when a teammate signed up for IMMD "on a whim" and I thought about how I'd like to be a spontaneous person.  That was back in April.  And I thought about it for the next four months.  So, I think I've established that I'm not and probably never can be a spontaneous person - at least not on such big things.  But along the way, I did realize just how sensible I am - sensible people don't do Ironmans five weeks apart.  And somehow 'sensible' was easier to break away from than 'unspontaneous.'

Of course, I did it in the most sensible way possible - waiting to sign up until after I'd finished IMMT.  Exactly 48 hrs after crossing the finish line of IMMT, I hit "submit" on IMMD.  

So, here I am.  Wondering just when the wheels will fall off, which they surely must.  I'm hoping against hope  that it'll be after mile 13 of the marathon, but even if it's before, I'm planning on enjoying every minute of the race both before and after.

So, in the immortal words of one of my childhood television memories:

Thunderbirds Are Go!

See you on the other side ...

PS - if you ever asked me if I was doing IMMD, I never lied to you.  I'd respond "That would be nuts!" or something like that.  Which it is.  And, because you're sensible people, you took that to mean "Nope, I'm not doing IMMD."