Andrew,did you see that participant list for IM?

We're on it! So exciting! It's starting to feel real now.

http://www.ironmanusa.com/participants/lists/11lou.html

 OMG!  That made my heart jump!   It is definitely real!  Last week was my first week of increased workouts.. my legs definitely know something is up :)  

I bought a foam roller to hopefully help with this IT band issue, man, that hurts! I used it 3 or 4 times since yesterday for about a minute at a time since that's all I can handle. Hoping it works well enough to give me more running time/miles. I also bought an IT band strap.

I have been using it religiously for my quads, it and now my calves, it really seems to work. I decided that the number one priority in the training is going to be to stay healthy, which means I am not going to pu**** early on too much, and I am sticking to a policy of not increasing workout length or intensity too much too quickly, and not feeling guilty about taking rest days, even if it means 3 a week. I don't know if I can truly be ready for the full with 4 workouts a week, but the lesson I learned from the marathon training was working out 4 days a week and resting 3 is way better than having to take 2 weeks off entirely - and still having a lot of pain during the event.

I also started scaling back my lifting routine. I am going to a full upper body routine (about 30 min) twice a week. I miss the intensity of my lifting workouts, but Its amazing how much more energy I have after just the first week of this, even with bringing my cardio up to at least an hour to 1.5 hours every workout (and a lot of interval anaerobic work.. trying to burn at least 1100 calories 4 days a week). Are you still planning to do weight/strength training as the training time increases?

Basically, I am using my own modified version of this plan:
http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=441

I lift 2 days a week right now, I plan on keeping the same lifting schedule to keep my core strong. I lift before my swim workout, so I plan to keep it that way.

 I copied and pasted the list into excel, and there are 2461 names.. I assume its close to or is now closed?

That's a lot of people, I wonder how many people they are letting in.

There were 2800+ numbers at IMAZ. But only about 2700 starters. Don't know about your particular race but they tend to be the same in terms of max entries if they are a WTC race.

I've got goosebumps for you guys!!!

Wooohoo!!!!!