One Week til Ironman Germany

Posted by on July 16, 2011 in Training

Been a while since I’ve posted here.  It’s because of three big reasons:  1)  I started a new job on May 1st and I’ve been putting in a lot of hours to shorten a big learning curve; 2)  Wedding planning and all things related took up a lot of time, even though I had maybe 5% ownership of all the tasks; 3)  Ironman training.

Well, the wedding came and went, and I am now a happily married man.  The hours on the job are prevalent and considerably more intense and longer than at my last job, but that last job was a cake-walk for the last year of it thanks to the wind-down til they closed and the steady reduction of things to do.  I want to succeed badly, but there is so much to learn and so much to do, so putting in the hours is a natural requirement.  Sure; I’m all for working smarter, not harder, but I can’t control how fast I’ll learn something, and when I don’t understand stuff, I can’t in good conscience just shrug my shoulders and say oh well.  It’s in my DNA to have to understand.

Ironman training, unfortunately, was the victim of all of this as I wound up doing only 50-60% of the scheduled workouts.  I did all of the weekend long rides and long runs, but the midweek stuff often weren’t done.  I don’t think that my conditioning suffered that much, but the guilt associated with not having checked off the box was hard to ignore.

Fast forward to today, a mere 8 days from Ironman Germany, and I’m feeling okay.  I’m starting to buy into the theory that because I have so many months and miles in me, I am actually ready.  I have the good fortune of having done this twice before, so I’m not entering into the dark unknown.  That’s doesn’t mean that I don’t have nerves and concerns, but I know that I will finish this race and I know that it will be a magical day.

I’m leaving for Frankfurt on Tuesday the 19th.  It’s an overnight flight on, of all carriers, Singapore Airlines and friends are telling me to expect luxury.  Hope they’re right!  Five of my Terrier Tri teammates are competing, so we’ll all reconvene in Frankfurt on Wednesday.  Our head coach will also be there, so we have a whole itinerary of events for that Wed-Sat leading up to the big day on Sunday.

Re Sunday, I have a lot of angst about that morning.  The race itself is psychologically a lot easier for me to digest.  It’s pretty basic; swim easy, cycle easy, and survive the run.  More to come on this in the daily posts that will follow.

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