IM Finish...has just finishing lost its prestige? (Page 4)

It's a personal thing. I just finished my first IM in 16:28. I was training to go faster, but a lot of factors made it impossible for me to replicate what I'd done in training. Finishing was my ultimate goal anyway, but a person still has to be in pretty good shape to cover that distance in 17 hours.

The "walkers" comment got me. I walked a half marathon once while injured. It was harder to walk 13.1 than to run 26.2, I kid you not. It took nearly 4 hours. I will never do that crap again. Walking may seem easy 'cuz we all do it every day, but try walking for hours and hours. My feet and back were killing me by the end. I wouldn't take it lightly!

Anyway, back to it being a personal thing. I have NEVER been athletic. I have no natural athletic ability. I tried to do sports in high school. I practiced twice as much as other people just so that I could stay slightly below average. I have a $600 road bike. I finished dead last in the swim in an Oly tri last summer and was able to improve my swim enough to complete the swim in an IM where a lot of people didn't make the cutoff. I busted a$$ to be good enough to finish in time. I had injuries, I had illness, I had work stress and overtime and life responsibilities that wouldn't just go away because I wanted to do an Ironman. To me, just to finish is absolutely amazing.

If I could quit my job and afford a coach and drop a few thousand on a road bike and make triathlon the biggest priority in my life, yeah, I'd probably finish a lot faster. Then again, I may start to get really tired of running, biking, and swimming.

I set my goals for me. If someone wants to diss me for not being faster or going farther and imply that it's because I'm not working hard, screw them. They don't know.