The Zen of Ultra Running

This race has been 3 years in the making.  **Read THIS POST  for the reason why I switched from a 100-miler to a half Ironman in 2020** After submitting the tenure packet in September of last year (2021) and completing 2 half Ironman races, I knew I was ready to step up to the full Ironman distance. This is because 1) I hoped that by this time next year I would be tenured already and 2) I wanted to give myself a 40th birthday present. It's always been my life goal to do an Ironman as the distance sounds difficult and challenging. However, the training and the time commitment scared me. I had no bandwidth to self-coach or train for an Ironman while still working toward tenure. That's why I kept putting it off until I was pretty sure that my career was stable.  One day in October of 2021 while I was grading papers and having an existential crisis I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the Ironman Chattanooga in 2022. After reviewing and reading comments about different IM r