Since this thread is back, I am reading all the posts with interest. I'm still quite heavy, so it's hitting close for me.
I haven't observed an ironman, but I just watched mile 19 at a marathon. Specifically, the Disneyworld marathon. There are many people in the race who did the 1/2 marathon the day before, and are doing the full marathon. You know who they are by the orange Goofy bibs.
I was waiting to see my friend pass by, who was doing his first marathon. He's an average size runner, not a skinny tiny guy, but not close to overweight either.
As I watched the crowd, I saw a lot of people my size. I'm 280. I expected to see lots of "us" in the half, but not so much in the full. What blew me away were the folks doing the Goofy Challenge. I saw one woman who was extremely overweight, steadily walking, with her goofy bib. She may have been walking, but she was still ahead of my friend, a much skinnier runner. And he had no lack of training.
This left me with some DUH observations:
It really is all about the training. I was under-prepared for the half, and it kicked the crap out of me. But even there, I finished ahead of a handful of folks (148 out of 22k) and many of them were not overweight. Training training training.
But the flip side is the reality that smacked me in this first year, something I knew but have stubbornly refused to address for a long time: training is not a magic bullet to weight loss.
I want to do a full IM. I want to do the Goofy race and a half challenge. I want to run an ultra trail run.
I don't want to do them at 280, trained or not. I definitely echo the idea that it's good to get out there NOW, and train NOW, not wait for the weight loss. I was inspired early in my training by meeting a guy my size who had done a HIM. It told me, I can reach now, while I lose weight.
But, there are two caveats, for me anyway: 1, if weight loss is still important to me, I can't ignore it. And 2, there are some events that I can train for while this weight, but we all have limits. For someone else, an IM at 280 is possible. For me, I doubt it. I have a HIM in less than 6 months. If I'm below 250, I'll be feeling awesome. I can imagine doing a HIM 30 pounds lighter than today. I can't imagine IM without at least a 50 pound loss from where I am now. I am downright blown away by my large brethren who get it done at these weights.