See, this is why no one lets [me] make the plans.

Over the past five months my plans, both in life and triathlon, have pretty radically changed.  I was originally planning on racing Ironman Texas in May (I even went down to Houston to ride the course) but a scheduled trial at work got in the way and I made the decision to withdraw from Ironman Texas.  Regardless of issues with work, this was probably a good choice as life and my inability to recover from bronchitis made training consistently fairly difficult. 

Having withdrawn from Texas, I was without an "A" race, so I made the decision to find a way into Ironman New York City (or Ironman New Jersey -- whatever you want to call it).  This wasn't the easiest race to enter.  In July of 2011 the race sold out in about 8 minutes and the Ironman Community Foundation slots sold out pretty quickly thereafter.  Pretty much the only way in was by raising funds for a charity.  A lot of the charities I was interested in working with (ASPCA, CAF, Covenant House Home Team and Team Hole in the Wall) were sold out and the remaining ones had incredibly high fundraising requirements ($8,900 for Team in Training).  The "easiest" way in was a $3000 donation to the Palisades Park Commission to assist in funding the re-paving of Alpine Hill, a cycling training climb in the New York City area.   Not the most glamorous of options, but it still got me an entry (as an aside to Kim -- I have no idea how much money I have spent -- and wasted-- on race entries this year). 

With the focus on IMNYC instead of IMTexas, the race shcedule changed as well.  Here's the schedule for 2012:

05/06/2012 - Bassman Half - Bass River State Forest, NJ
06/02/2012 - Rev 3 Olympic - Middlefield, CT
06/30/2012 - Tupper Lake Tinman - Tupper Lake, NY
07/22/2012 - Tri Quonset - North Kingston, RI
08/11/2012 - Ironman New York City

I get to start the racing season this weekend in New Jersey.  It will be interesting to race after a not-so-great winter and a nasty bought of bronchitis over the past two weeks.  Hopefully I keep my head together, hit my heart rates and finish strong.  I counting on things only going up from here.