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welcome..a five year ironman plan is very smart...not laughing at all.  gives you about a year for each distances of  sprint, oly, 1/2 then full 

tell us your background and what your current levels of activity are and perhaps we can recommend a program off the main site.

Ditto Joe!  Couldn't have said it any better! Welcome to the board Kimbely.

Kimberly, there is nothing wrong wtih a IM in 5 years starting from scratch.  I had only done 3 sprint tri's before my kids came along.  It was 8 years later (they were then 5 and 8) when I decided to tri again with sprints I didn't think my knee could take more than 5K at a time, but I like longer races so tris were logical to me.  For me, it was almost like starting from scratch.  By the time they were 7 and 10, I had just turned 40 and did complete an IM, so that's basically with 2 1/2 years training.  I am also on my own for most of the training. 

There is always help around.  Look for a local running and/or cycling club.  Annual memberships for the clubs is usually reasonable and there are at least one group rides/runs every week from most clubs.  The experienced members are always willing to help out new folks with questions, and the camraderie is great.  For swimming, there are a lot of master's swim teams around.  Being with other people makes the workouts go faster.

Best of luck.

Sharon

Welcome Kim!

You can do it!  Getting started is the hard part, and you have done that - its all easy from here on

Start slow, think endurance/distance as opposed to speed, be steady/regular/committed, and HAVE FUN.
Having fun and enjoying the exercise/benefits is what will pull you through.

Again, welcome to the board.

Dan

Welcome to the site.  Loads of good info here, so just look around.  Loads of good people, too.

I wouldn't worry too much about all of the equipment.  I've trained for almost a year and the only thing that I had to buy was a pair of shoes when my other ones wore out.  I just used whatever swimming gear I had and the $79 mountain bike that was in the garage.  If you are on the five year plan, you'll probably spend a lot of time in the pool - I think wetsuits are options, not requirements, especially for getting started.  The big thing right now is to just get out and do it.

I started with the book 'Triathlon Training in 4 hours a week" by Eric Haar.  Good plans there and advice on pretty much everything - but that was before I found this site.  This site has a lot of good information, but some people prefer to have a book or something to put their hands on.

As far as the dork thing goes, I went to a triathlon camp put on by a buy who does Ultraman events.  These guys make triathletes look reasonably sane.  It's like double Ironman events in two days or so - completely ridiculous distances.  Anyway, he looks kind of dorkish when he runs, but it didn't bother me for very long - I couldn't see him after about five minutes (just plain couldn't keep up with him).  Looking good, kind of like having all the really neat, expensive gear, is optional in my book.

Train hard and enjoy the benefits.  That's what it's all about.

TB