A Plan is Forming

Posts have been few and far between since Ironman Canada, partly because I'm not doing much tri stuff but mostly because I have no desire to document my life at the moment. And really, the fact that I'm swimming twice a week is lovely but not terribly interesting, especially now that butterfly is no longer an exercise in near drowning.

This dearth of news and lack of interest in reporting is unlikely to change before the new year. I do, however, think that it's worth reporting that I've figured out a goal for next year. Actually, as my last goal took a year to achieve I figured what the heck, why not go for a two year goal. If this keeps up I'll be like the Chinese Communist party and coming up with five year plans, (desperately trying to tie in a pun tying in the Long March and tri training and failing miserably).

To rewind a bit, on the weekend I met with my coach and had a chat about my goals for the coming season. I started out with no real idea of what I want to do next year except have a goal and go faster. Not a lot for Alan to work with there.

After talking things through a bit I decided that I want to see what I can do at the Olympic distance. I'm conservative in most things in my life, racing being no different, so I think it would be cool to push my boundaries and see how hard I can go at the shorter distance.

We started talking about ITU short course Worlds: 2009 in Australia, 2010 in Bulgaria, 2011 in Beijing, etc. Okay, it turns out that 2010 Worlds is actually in Budapest not Bulgaria, but I stopped listening when Alan mentioned Australia so all I remembered were two other destinations starting with B.

While Alan was singing the praises of someplace starting with B, I was thinking that I hadn't seen my good friend Jason in way too long. Worlds would be a pricey trip regardless of whether I went to Australia or some B-place, in fact financially it would be a choice between the two so why not do worlds AND visit my friend in one trip?

So, here's the plan - next year I'm going try to qualify for 2009 ITU Worlds. Triathlon Canada hasn't announced the qualifier races yet so the rest of the planning is up in the air until early 2008.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen, I have a plan!