I had a lot of time to think this summer about what I wanted to do in 2015.  I was originally hoping to have a late race in 2014 to salvage any kind of season, but my elbow had other plans.  I’ve been wanting to qualify for Kona for a while now and I really thought I was going to get it done at Eagleman.  Qualifying at a 70.3 is much harder than it is at an IM race in my opinion.  The few 70.3’s that were qualifiers had pretty stacked fields and my age group usually only had 1 slot allocated.  In my mind, I had to execute the perfect race to qualify at a 70.3.  I had been eyeing Ironman Texas since May as I think the race suits my needs and I really just wanted to do an Ironman (who doesn’t want to be able say they swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and then ran a marathon?).  The course is relatively flat, its hot as hell there in May (what better training environment is Florida?), and its early in the season (I didn’t want a mid summer IM and then have to do Kona right afterward).  I figured IMTX, gave me a pretty good shot at qualifying even if I didn’t execute the perfect race.  My age group allocated 3 slots to Kona last year and with Texas being the North American Championships in 2015, there will be even more slots allocated to my age group than last (my guess is 4 or 5).  Little did I know that Ironman was planning on removing all Kona slots from 70.3’s starting in 2015.  Once I learned this, it was a no brainer to add IMTX to the schedule in 2015.  I’m also planning a few local 70.3’s starting in March with Toughman Florida and then Florida 70.3 in April.  

I would say all eyes are on qualifying for Kona, but I’m trying to not put so much emphasis on it.  I can’t control what everyone does but I can control what I do.  My biggest goal is to just get to the start line in Texas healthy.  If I can do that and just focus on doing the little things right in training, everything else will fall into place.