AsiaFest Travel, Day 1

The view from breakfast in Singapore this morning, or is it dinner...my body clock has no idea at the moment...

One of the reasons I've been able to improve rather substantially the past few seasons of triathlon racing is because of a consistent training schedule.  I could almost always count on a steady two hours Monday through Friday, with a training day either on Saturday or Sunday. All the workouts added up, I got faster, times improved, and I found myself competing for age group podiums on occasion.

This year, specifically this summer, has been very different. June and July brought a vacation to Bali, a convention in San Diego, and bronchitis along with it. August brought a huge gaming convention called Gamescom, in Germany, and my reward for that trip was a second bout with bronchitis.  I've missed close to a full week of training to illness and almost two weeks to business travel.

Now, it's Saturday at 10 a.m....in Singapore. Here I begin a whirlwind tour taking me eventually to Seoul and Taipei to promote Sunset Overdrive, our game studio's Xbox One exclusive coming out this October.  If I'm lucky, I'll fit in roughly five training sessions over the nine days I'm gone. The optimist in me wants to focus on the quality Ironman Arizona prep workouts I'll manage despite a challenging schedule that includes 20,000 air miles.  The pessimist fights back hard, reminding me that's four lost opportunities, four lost chances to reach my goal of breaking 10 hours at IMAZ in November, let alone a sub-5 hour finish at Ironman 70.3 Silverman in a few weeks.

I suppose all I can do is my best, which will be begin immediately after this post. One workout at a time. I've only been off the plane six hours after my 18 hour odyssey. But don't feel bad for me.  I flew Singapore Airlines business class.

Sure, I'll try the duck foie gras starter, but I can't quite choose between the Italian chianti or the French Bordeaux, so let's go with both.

I finally understand how folks like the President of the United States can look like they haven't missed a beat after a grueling travel day.  

Singapore Airlines is the best I've ever flown.  Huge seats. Amazing food. Courteous and helpful flight attendants.  And the flights across the ocean were largely empty on the expansive A-380, which featured an all-business class upper deck. 

Since arriving, I've tried to find a 10k or half-marathon to race. I came close, but the half marathon that begins tomorrow is reserved primarily for members of the Singapore Armed Forces, and the 10k that begins this afternoon (huh?) is about 25 minutes away and there are no age-group prizes. Meh. I'm going to run near the site of the Singapore Grand Prix on a beautiful garden path. Will share more with my next update.

I should get some nice swim yardage in here, I think. Plus, good sighting chances to not go over the edge haha!

Ironman training isn't glamorous. It's not always fun. But it certainly can be exotic.

Ship It, Dammit!

It's been almost five years...time for a new website design!

Publishing a new blog site, in some ways, is like preparing for a major race.  You map out your goals. You may hire someone to help you realize your vision.  You encounter numerous obstacles, some more serious than others. As your launch date approaches, the changes you make get smaller and smaller. Until finally, there's just one thing left to do...hit the LAUNCH button and hope for the best.

One big difference though is that when it's your own personal project and there's no countdown clock involved, intentions evaporate into wishes and vague promises that sound like, "Yeah, I should get to that." You ignore enough of those in triathlon training and when race day does show up...well, you know what happens.

I've procrastinated reformatting my blog site for way too long. As in the better part of 2014.  And I stopped blogging daily a long time ago. Too much work, too much training, too many new opportunities with Lava and Ironman.com. All excuses. Good and valid ones, in fact. But excuses nonetheless.

If you want something bad enough, you don't need a deadline to motivate you. 

Welcome to the revamped Ironmadman.com. A place where I hope to include new content on a daily basis, even if it's me asking for YOUR submissions to make this site even better.

More to come!