I'll take my humble pie straight up, with a side of revised IM goals

You would never know sometimes that I am a motivational speaker who talks to athletes of all abilities about setting realistic goals.
Case in point, on May 1 in my blog entry I was throwing out my potential IM finishing times based completely on my inexperience. Funny thing is that when I talk to running groups about goal setting, I always tell people (especially newbies) that you should have 3 goals: First is to finish, second is a realistic medium goal based on your average training runs, and third would be basically a best case scenario such as a PR. I tell them by setting 3 goals, you don't set yourself up for complete failure (like I did in retrospect on my May 1 post).

So what gave me the wakeup call? This past week my wife and I were in a local Loew's in the middle of the day picking up some hardware and I just happened to run into a guy (probably early 30's) wearing an Ironman Arizona shirt. Of course I asked him how he did, etc., and found out he had done 9 IM's and was going to be doing his 10th in Louisville. Sponge that I am, I was asking him lots of questions, and finally asked him what his IM PR was, which he told me was 11:15. He also told me his marathon PR was in the 2:59 range, which is 20 minutes faster than my 3:19 PR for the marathon. As we talked more and more, I began to see in my own mind how improbable it was for me to be thinking about a 10:30-11:00 IM when I had not even done one yet, and how I needed to backtrack and re-establish my goals.

So here are my revised goals as of today for my first IM in June of 2009: First is to finish within the alotted cutoff time, second is to achieve a medium range goal in the neighborhood of 13:00-14:00, and third under a best case scenario will be to come in somewhere around 12:00-13:00. After the talk I had with this guy, if I break 12:00 I will be both stunned and elated.