It's Not Really A Dress Race

I should stop telling Moana that she is going to Kona next week. She doesn't understand 'next week' very well. This evening she was upstairs yelling "I WANT TO GO TO KONA NOW!!" Yeah, welcome to the club, Sweetie.

Earlier we were hanging out and she insisted on putting on one of her princess dresses (what's new?)... and Grammy sent a box that arrived today so Moana has new glass slippers that light up when she walks so of course she was wearing those (she will probably sleep in them tonight)... and can't forget her pink wings (she knows how to put those on all by herself now). She was holding her magic wand too and then she informed me that the race in Kona was a 'Dress Race'. What is a Dress Race, I asked? Apparently the person who wears the nicest dress in Kona is going to win. You heard it here first, folks!

Maybe I'll put Moana's wings in my special needs bag. Those might really come in handy in that last 10K.

So things are going well here in my world. That rest last week hit the spot and consequently I have been nailing all my key workouts this week and then just totally chillin' out on my easy days. Today I had an easy run on tap. Max HR 145, he said. Um, I don't think I've ever done a run that easy?!? I wasn't sure I could do it with a HR that low. But as a fun little game I made it my goal to actually stay <140 as much as possible... I felt like I was crawling... totally brought back nightmares memories from January/February when I was trying to keep my HR <150 and was jogging like 10'+ pace but this time it actually didn't bug me at all... I just kept barely moving forward little by little and then almost fell over at the end when I saw 9:16 pace avg HR 138 on my garmin.

Let's just review something for a moment, shall we? My Ironman marathon PR is 4:07... that's a whopping 9:25 pace. I'm thinking there is a massive PR coming my way in a few weeks. That's what I'm thinking.

Yesterday I did a swim/bike/run. It was sort of long, parts of it were hard, and all very specific. At the end of the run when I sat down to type my post workout notes in Training Peaks, it occurred to me that I felt like a machine... just program in the sport, the time and the pace and I just churn it out.

So anyway, that is cool. And confidence building. Seems like I've been reading a lot about confidence and mindset lately... This is an interesting time of year if you're racing Kona... it can be so hard to keep yourself from overanalyzing everything... comparing yourself to everyone else and wondering if you're doing the right stuff in these final few weeks... Am I doing too much? Am I doing enough? Am I going hard enough? Am I going too hard? (Is there such a thing?) I think in these final weeks is when a coach is worth his/her weight in gold because as the athlete, all you have to do is shut out the noise and follow your plan... Trust your coach and don't overanalyze any of it. I think I'm doing a great job of that this time around... And I'm really looking forward to testing myself with another Ironman!