support; accountability

training ( again) to complete an ironman distance tri in september 2010---was aiming for sept 09 but was working off a book training plan and seemed to have forgotten to check in with my body as a summer cough took over for weeks and weeks---ok now I'm back on track, have a whole year to train and this time re hired an old coach--all good and/but I think it would be so helpful to have a community of women for support and accountability I'm fairly broke and can't really afford the coach but since I'm just assuming the universe will provide the funds to support me (:D ) I want to be sure i actually follow my training plan---anyone out there want to jump on board and create a support/push/motivate group with stated goals and check ins?

good idea, if I ever do an ironman I hope the group is still around, still pretty far off for me, cannot mentally handle the full marathon.

doesn't have to be an ironman---whatever your goals are support is always a great thing--yes? Also putting your goals out there and telling them to another person(s) creates an accountability that can be helpful. My bottom line goal is always to stay balanced and explore the edges---I'm hoping that training for and participating in an ironman will provide an opportunity to do just that......

I think that's kind of what we do here on TE ;) You'll see over in Running that a lot of ladies are training for marathons/half marathons and more or less posting training logs. During tri season, some ladies have posted IM or other race/training logs as we go, if we have a few people it might be easier to stick with it (a la what we've done over in Running!).

I did find that literally recording my hard work did help me, too - the training plan I used this year used TrainingPeaks and I'll use it again next year (I'd use it for my marathon training but I have yet to put all the workouts in by hand).

I guess TE is public, we could start some kind of TE sub-community or something if anyone's concerned about their personal stuff being visible. Sometimes you do discover the undesirable during IM training ;)

I like using beginnertriathlete.com for logging my workouts. Calendar, charts, and graphs all in one place for good visual incentives. It calculates your average speed for all sports too.

Also it adds up the times for the week/month/year so it would be easy to copy and paste to a TE thread.

It sounds like you're looking to creat a thread dedicated to a training "group" so to speak. Sort of like the mentoring groups on BT, but without an identified leader?
If that's what you have in mind, it sounds like a great idea to me.
I think you'd just have to start a thread with a specific title, and we'd keep it going by all posting to it regularly.