The big push is on. The distances are climbing. The fatigue is mounting. Consuming enough food has become a serious challenge, as has staying awake in the middle of the day. I’m getting sick of pasta. I was already sick of rice. Chicken breast? Starting to annoy me. But I’ll never be sick of bananas.
The race is not until the end of September (exactly two months from today, but who’s counting?), though I don’t feel ready. I don’t have to feel ready yet—but I know even now that I won’t feel ready come race day. And as a swimming friend once said (and it’s my favorite Ironman quote), “You’re never ready for Ironman.”
The bike is going to be tight. I’m not a fast rider and it’s a relatively tough course. If I have a mechanical failure, there’ll be trouble. I’ve started practicing tire-changing again, which is a good thing because my skills are rusty. By the end of September, I need to have it down to a science.
I’ve also started amping up my effort on the shorter rides and doing more of them. Five out of six days of workouts now include riding. But it’s good. I’m already seeing improvements in my strength. And I know having several big ones under my belt will give me more confidence. I did a long one last weekend in the valley and it was tough but good. I’m hopeful it will come together eventually. It did for Florida. All those long days in the saddle paid off—but they felt terrible at first. I remember ending those first few 160km rides with my daughter and thinking I can’t do this. What have I signed up for? Until the one that we finished and looked at each other and said, “We can do this. We’ve got it.”
And then there’s Race Brain. My physio confirms this is a thing, so I feel a little better about my occasional moments of baffling stupidity during which I decide to do something like, oh, I don’t know, try the exercises from some random dude on Instagram because they look like they might be just the thing my body needs. Guess what? Not only are they not just the thing, but when I showed them to both my physio and my chiropractor (since I needed to see both after doing the exercises), they shuddered in horror.
But when you have Race Brain and you’re at this stage of training, you’re always looking for the thing that might help battle the aches and pains or give you an edge somehow. No. From here to the start line, I have vowed to stick to what’s been working and ignore anything that pops up on my Instagram feed.
As for swimming… My left shoulder got better, so my right one decided to act up. Hello, Ironman training. Swimming was going great, and now I’m barely doing it. Three things give me hope. One, it’s a downriver swim. Two, I have a strong swimming base so it should be easy to build it back up again once I’m better. And three, my physio and chiropractor (have I mentioned them yet?) are fabulous, and I know they’ll both help me get there.
I don’t want to jinx my run training, so I just won’t talk about it. I’ve got a great new pair of shoes. That’s all I’m going to say.
“You’ll be fine,” my daughter reassured me this afternoon. “You’ve never not been fine.”
True. But in the meantime, fear is an excellent motivator.
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