One step forward, two steps back

Last night I remarked to my wife that I felt as if I was going about the training for doing an Ironman backward. Some people might say, "Well, you should do the swim, then see if you can do the bike after that, and then see if you can do the run after that." I figured that the run was the hardest part, so I focused there. I still need to learn how to swim (better). That's backward.

Then it came to building my workout plan for this year. I was sitting in the doctor's office, and I agonized over how many days I should do training and on which days. It took the doctor a half an hour to see me, and I went through three drafts of just the days. I finally settled on something that I thought looked decent. Then I said to myself, "Now I just have to modify one of those training programs to fit my schedule." I have about three Ironman training books, so I picked the one I thought would work and looked at the schedule in it. It was a perfect match! And then I started thinking, "What if I had picked up the book first? That would have saved me a half an hour..." Backwards...

While I wait on my bone density and x-ray results, I could tell you about that advice I received from the only other Celiac Ironman (woman, it turns out) I know. I think the best advice was that I need to figure out what is really important and settle for the "best I can manage" on the rest. That approach seems true to me and straight-forward, so that's advice I'll take.