Have you had yours yet? When you first feel race season in the air for the year, when you first glimpse what it is exactly that you're a part of, and how you are one of so few people? It's amazing.

It happens at different times for different people, some experience it early on in the season while others are late bloomers, but there's no mistaking the feeling of momentum and adrenaline mixed with an inexplicable kind of peace rushing through you - a satisfaction with yourself and your world despite its trials. For me, it happened last night on a run that wasn't very far and wasn't very fast, it wasn't even mandatory, but the sunset was just right and the air was just crisp enough, there was energy in it - the kind that radiates from a transition site at 6:00 in the morning. It was faint but very much there, and enough to remind me that this is Ironman I'm after this year.

How could I forget, you ask? I didn't forget, I just don't think I really felt it until last night. People can know a thing, know for example they're going to get married, or graduate, or have a baby someday - maybe even someday soon - but being on the brink of it is a very different thing. This is how Ironman is for me. Was for me, that is, until last night.

See, running on the treadmill is traitorous in ways. This is what went through my head as I calculated my miles last night, as 10 - 10.5ish-minute treadmill miles somehow translated into 8.5 - 9ish-minute outside miles. My breathing was escalated and my heart rate was up - it was a whole other world in ways and at first I didn't understand why it felt so much harder. My legs felt as if they were doing the practiced pace, but it was definitely harder. I started checking my time then, and noted that it wasn't what I was used to running at all.

Now, I'm sure there's some bio-mechanic reasoning for the perceived difference, or lack thereof, but I'm going with the idea that it was the prospect of getting somewhere that made me run faster. The tangible point A to point B - not me running in place watching TV, but the actual covering of ground. It mattered more to me for some reason, I suppose because I could see my progress in something other than digitized calories and distance. It was just the reality that I wasn't going to simply be able to flip a switch and be instantly 'back' in my living room. ...you want to get home? Only one way to get there... .

I felt it all kick in when I heard that in my head; that's when it felt like I was training for something instead of just "working out." There was a bigger purpose and a mission - a destination, and as the sun set around me in that moment I knew what that feeling was.

2.4 miles. 112 miles. 26.2 miles, and everything in between... coming.