Registering for an Ironman in 2014

Texas in mid-May and Coeur D'Alene in mid/late-June are the earliest US races.  Ironman Los Cabos down in Mexico is March 30th.

Texas takes awhile to sell out because 1) Early season and 2) It's freakin' hot (especially for early season as nobody is acclimated).

So I'd suggest that you prioritize three things: time of year (your training and life schedule will dictate that), how far you'll travel (comfort and cost) and finally, WTC vs non-WTC. If you have more flexibility in any one of those choices, you'll have more options.

The Rev3 series is worth considering, there's Chesapeakeman in Columbia MD, Beach to Battleship in NC, and there is a brand new upstate NY race called Peasantman starting this summer.

Alex...first of all, welcome to BT.

There are several things I wanted to advise you on before you narrow down your selections.

1.  You mentioned wanting to target an earlier race in the year.  Are you sure you will be able to train during the winter?  You mentioned your HIM is in New York, so I'm assuming you live in the Northeast?  The biggest reason why there are not early season IMs in the Northern hemisphere is because of the weather and most people don't like to do IM training in the winter.  That's why you see a lot of IMs from December to May in places like Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.

2.  You mentioned wanting to do another full marathon between your HIM and your 2014 IM...while also maintaining your HIM fitness.  How do you plan on accomplishing this especially if you're looking at an early season IM?  Most people would not recommend marathon training as a lead up to IM training.  It seems like a reasonable idea at first, but in reality it just doesn't work well.  For most average runners, a marathon takes a lot of training (read: less swimming and biking) and also takes a lot of time to recover from.  That will likely impact your IM training much more negatively than positively.  I'm not saying it can't be done...it's just usually not the best decision for most people...especially those attempting their first IM where they likely need to make fitness gains across all three disciplines.

My advice to you would be to think about how much recovery you want after your HIM.  1 week?  Maybe 3-4 weeks to give yourself a nice mental break as well?  Then try to find an IM plan that works well for where you think you will be after your HIM, and where you want to be for IM training.  Make sure it's realistic.  The plan could be 16 weeks...or something like 26 weeks if you feel like you need 8-10 weeks of base building.  Now try to find a race you may want to do and backfill your training plan.  Does it fit?  Do you have work, family, or other commitments during the time your training plan falls that would prevent you from training properly?  Holidays, graduations, family vacations, reunions, projects, weather, weddings, etc?  If it doesn't look like it will work out, pick a different race, backfill the training and evaluate again.  Rinse...repeat.

The common problem people have when picking a big event like an IM is they only think about race day and forget about all the other logistical road blocks that lead up to race day.