We just finished month two of training and what an interesting 2 months it has been! We have had some really high highs and some really low lows. Here are a few of our most memorable moments from our journey. Enjoy!

I (KN) started October super pumped about the IRONMAN. I was really excited to get a bike so I looked all over to find just the right one. I ended up getting a super sweet Felt bike off of Craigslist. So I bring it back from Knoxville and take it out for a spin. I put my headphones in, my tennis shoes on (it didn’t have clips yet), and went up on Missionary Ridge for a short ride. I had seen all the pros lean really hard on sharp turns so I decided to do it like them. Next thing I knew I was on the ground and my bike was on top of me. I was VERY disoriented, I couldn’t feel my knee, my arm was gushing blood, and my bike was very mangled so I called KC. She was across town so I ended up coasting my bike down the ridge to my house and drove it up to my friend’s to get fixed up.

I was on the Ridge a week later and was out for another short spin on my birthday before work. I got about 10 min into the ride and wrecked again. My whole derailleur was in the wheel. Long story short… I had some problems with the bike that I don’t even know how to explain. I called KC again and she came to get me, ripped my earbuds out, and yelled at me for wearing them again- something about it being dangerous she said (thankfully I was wearing my helmet this time).

My (KC) October was somewhat uneventful. In a lot of ways I felt like I was just training for the half IRONMAN again. Not much to write home about. Then November hit and things went south. I started a new medication that my body didn’t react to well and it threw me into a deep depression- something I have never experienced before. I didn’t get out of bed for several days until KN literally drug me out to go get pancakes at Aretha Frankenstein’s (if you haven’t been there we highly recommend). I switched medications ASAP but things didn’t change overnight. This put a real damper on my training. I started several sessions with KN that ended in us finishing alone because I made her go on without me. On one of those notable instances was when we rode from KN’s house. We were 20 miles out into Chickamauga and I had a mental breakdown. My body was unusually tired and I couldn’t keep up. We rode the 20 miles back alone. I cried all the way back to St. Elmo and she got stopped by an officer who told her that it was really dangerous to be riding where she was and that she needed to be careful.

If I’m being honest, KN should have started a tally of the number of times that I tried to quit in November. If she had a dollar for each, she could have bought a new bike. Mentally this time around has been much tougher for me. Training with people that are not also training for the IRONMAN is much easier for me than training with someone that is also training. I have found that I struggle with feeling like I hold her back in many sessions. We have had to have conversations on how to train well together and give each other the support that we need but the road has not been an easy one to say the least.

This month has been a hard one but we closed out on better notes than we started. We ended the month with an 8 mile night run through downtown Chattanooga, the YMCA Master’s Swim coach offered for us to come to his class til the end of the year to pick up some tips for swimming, we had a beautiful 40 mile ride through Apison and North Georgia with perfect weather, and KN learned how to flip turn! December is going to be a good month.