What A Weekend!

We just had an awesome weekend. Tomorrow is Scott's birthday and the best present I could give him was some quality family time so I rented a condo on the beach in Haleiwa for the weekend and we took a little vacation. It was awesome waking up and drinking coffee and looking at this the last few mornings.

Yesterday morning I finally participated in one of the North Shore Swim races of the summer. I actually meant to do the one two weeks ago but forgot to enter before the price went up and the thought of paying $50 for a 30' swim didn't sit so well so I skipped it. I managed to enter the one yesterday before the price went up though so I showed up to swim... For whatever reason these swims didn't interest me all that much this year and consequently the whole time I was swimming yesterday all I could think was I just don't care about this... In reality I think that is some sort of protective mechanism where my brain sends those signals out because I am pretty fatigued from accumulated Ironman training the last few months and my fatigue seems to manifest itself via those types of thoughts. Anyway, not surprisingly, I did not swim well at all. In fact, I got beat by a 65-69 yo woman running up the beach! Lol. Classic. Granted she is bas ass (BUT she is 65-69!!!) She has never beaten me before so I thought that was just so funny. And I know my mom will fall off her chair when she sees this but I'm going to post it anyway because it is exactly indicative of how I felt about that race yesterday.

So naturally since I was so trashed, after the swim I went and ran up/down a long hill. It was ~7.5 miles from sea level to ~1000ft... and then back down.

In all honesty I felt like death right from the first step. Had Nalani not been with me there's a good chance I would have turned around after the first tenth of a mile and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking mai tais on the beach with Scott and Moana. Instead I sucked it up and considered it to be good mental training for Ironman... practicing putting one foot in front of the other when you feel like death... Just like Ironman! So that was perfect. In good news I was only in my own personal hell for maybe 5 miles and then my legs came around and it got a little better and I was glad I persevered. And if you're wondering what the repercussions are of pounding downhill for 7.5 miles, I'll show you. Beautiful, eh? I should lose that one just in time to go to Canada.

Interestingly I was not at all sore this morning and nothing actually hurt. I'm just systemically tired. Apparently even if you spend the rest of the weekend lounging at the beach, you'll still harbor some fatigue after a day like that. (File that under 'duh'.)

And of course I watched the online coverage of IMLP on and off today... It was quite humbling to see that many (almost all?!?) of my friends who were racing there were chewed up and spit out by that course today... and these are some very strong women who I compete against and I know they were trained and ready yet they did not have the day they anticipated. That is further confirmation in my mind that Ironman is a different beast... it is NOT like a half ironman... if you're having a bit of an off day in an Ironman it can easily cost you an hour or more vs what you anticipated... and there are just no guarantees that it's all going to come together on race day. I'll be interested to read race reports and hear what they think happened... but I know that feeling of just being DONE on the marathon yet still trying to get yourself to the finish line (walking in many cases!). For me I think it is going to be more of a mental battle vs a physical battle in Canada... and to that end I'm tailoring my training to put myself in scenarios where I just want to be *done* yet I will not allow myself to be done (note my run yesterday!). So far I am succeeding in this. I capped off 52 miles of running this week with a moderately long brick today- running 6 miles off the bike at IM pace when it was middle of the day and super hot and I did it by simply turning my brain off and running. I did not allow myself to think about it at all. I just did it. So that is going to be my race plan for IMC. I'm going to execute like a robot with no brain. Or try anyway... ;)