I picked a great time to start putting this journey online. Within a day of my previous post, I paid one of the prices of being 45: I slept funny and had severe lower back pain for days. I could still swim with this pain, and it even seemed to help, but running and cycling were very difficult. I am finally back on a full routine, but it seemed like a good time to touch on one of the joyful considerations of getting into endurance sports in your middle age (or later) years:

14 months. That’s what I’ve given myself to train for a half Ironman. I’m 45. Over the last two years I’ve lost over 120 pounds and gotten myself comfortable (again) with running enough to pop up and tackle half marathons without hating myself. In what is apparently a strong Elder Millennial trend, triathlons have now caught my eye and I’ve decided to our even more time into being outside. It’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s a midlife trisis. The 14 months started a month