We now rejoin Julie's Ironman journey, already in progress

The triathlon bug first bit me in 2002, and the blogging bug, too. I'm not sure if I blogged to keep myself honest in my training, or if I trained to give myself something to blog about, but the two seemed to go well together. I finished two sprints, an Olympic distance, and a half-ironman in those first few years, keeping an enthusiastic chronicle of all my challenges and questions and lessons and mistakes and triumphs.

Unfortunately, the website where I was blogging, triathlete.com, has been through some ups and downs of its own, and most of that blog is a goner. Actually, the site ate my blog twice. ("Eat my blog once, shame on you…") Whatever. It doesn't matter. The whole point has always been to someday finish an ironman, and as of a couple of weeks ago, I'm signed up for one. So this thing is waaaay serious now, and I think it was time for a better blog anyway. I need more than two commenters, for one thing, and when race day comes, you know I am going to need pictures!

But I am sorry about the triathlete.com thing, because they didn't mean to eat my blog, and there were some great people there who have helped me tremendously to get to this point.

So okay, that's all the backstory you're going to get. If you just started reading, you're going to have to start in the middle. Tomorrow we resume the tale from where I am right now, which is tapering for my second half-ironman on Sunday (gulp!).