Sunday, April 3, 2011

About The Home Stretch

Two weeks from today, on April 17th,, I will be racing the Ironman 70.3 New Orleans.  Preparation for this event started in earnest on January 17th.  Two days after finishing my winter project: P90X.

Since that day, I have logged in 1015 combined miles, and according to my coach's plan, tomorrow I start tapering, so taper I will!

Only thing left now is to trust the training.  Trust that I have given everything possible each time out.  That with each lap in the pool, each mile on the bike or on the pavement, I have had a purpose behind it.

About this point in the training process a curious thing begins to happen.  Yeah, I begin to wonder if I've done enough, if I could have done anything different, but I believe that this happens to most everyone out there.  But this is not what I'm talking about.

What I'm referring to is the fact that right about a week ago, I started noticing and feeling aches and pains I hadn't felt before, as I do prior to any other event. Every little thing seems to be magnified a thousand times.

I come home and I take inventory.  Yeah, the knee feels a bit more sore, the ankle aches just a tad more.  My back is tighter than usual. The shoulder is not as mobile as I'd like to be.  I stretch extra, I roll more often, I apply Biofreeze more frequently.  And I go on.

All this however, is in direct preparation to what's ahead, just 146 days from today:  Ironman Louisville.

3 comments:

  1. I'm with you on this - good observations. Just did California 70.3 yesterday so aches and pains don't begin to describe the feelings! Thank goodness for the endorphins dose! My full IM is May 21 in Texas.

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  2. Woohoo, know you'll be fine, just nerves. Hey, reading Matt Long's story. Maybe you should read his story about training for an ironman race, just qualified for Boston, got hit by a bus on his bike and almost died. It's his story about how he recovered and came back.

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  3. Thanks for the comments Sladed and Dian! I appreciate the support!

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