I missed the registration for the inaugural Ironman 70.3 Raleigh on June 2nd.  Well, the normal registration.  When registration opened last fall, Katie was still looking for a job, and the $250 race entry fee seemed like an unnecessary expense.  Fast forward several months: Katie is gainfully employed, but the race sold out relatively quickly.

Enter Inside-Out Sports.  The local triathlon store had a handful of registration spots they would include for free with the purchase of a (pricey) gift certificate.  The plan: use the gift certificate to purchase a few items I could flip on ebay (e.g. a garmin watch), and score a race registration for the trouble.  Somehow Katie agreed.

I’m still actually waiting to hear from the Ironman folks about the registration so I’m not officially in the race yet, but I expect that to get ironed out soon enough. (Ba-dum ching.)  [Update: I was able to register for the event on 5-14-13 Woo-hoo!] Otherwise I am excited to be racing in my second half-iron distance triathlon, and my first triathlon of 2013.  My goal is to finish below six hours; last fall I finished in about 6:25 at my first half-iron triathlon.  This time around I am looking most to see improvement in my run.  The bike course is similar to last fall’s, which proved challenging for me.  I haven’t logged as many training miles on the bike, so I don’t expect to see much in the way of improvement here.  Ultimately I am looking forward to the ‘Ironman’ atmosphere, as well as getting a good read on my conditioning for the Beach 2 Battleship, which will be 21 weeks from Ironman Raleigh.

Ironman Raleigh is less than four weeks out.  In the meantime Noah and I are signed up to race in the St. Francis 5K & Fun Run.  I am pretty excited to see Noah compete in his first race, a half mile course.

Looking back on April, as evidenced by my twitter feed I completed the #30daysofbiking challenge, and succeeded in biking every day of April.  Somehow the weather held up and I can’t really recall getting caught in bad weather on any of my rides.  I am also on pace to run 1000 miles this year; a few days into May I have traveled well over 400 miles on foot.   Overall Strava tells me I have exercised over 1000 miles on the year between cycling, running, and swimming.

ps About the gift certificate- if anyone actually wants some piece of equipment that Inside-Out carries, drop me a line.  Particularly if you are in the market for a new garmin or some such.  I just had my first bike fitting done with them, and I am pretty happy with the results.

I couldn’t find the Tommy Boy clip referenced above, so I guess I’ll link to the trailer for the Spirit of the Marathon 2.