Enjoy the Fitness

It's happened. The nightmares are becoming more real. It must be close to race day-I get nightmares before marathons and now before Ironman. And the other night's was a doozy! I woke up in a panic at around 1am after a horrible dream about race day where everything that could go wrong did. As I tried calming myself down, I had a horrible thought. Race day is 39 days (oh crap on a stick!!!) away and after factoring a 3 week taper, that means we have less than one month of training left. This thought had me up all night as I reviewed every second of my training since February. As many times as I tried telling myself to trust Coach, trust the training and trust that I've done everything right, I couldn't shake it! So, needless to say, I had a very sleepless night which led to a slug-fest in the lake the next day!

As always, our training is steadily increasing week by week. Our swims, rides and runs keep getting longer. Three weeks ago, Freddy did his first century of the season with a big bunch of our Runners Edge of the Rockies friends and coaches while I joined my girlfriends for the Skirt Sports Half Marathon. Unlike me, Freddy was born on his bike and would be perfectly happy if he could be on it all the time. But he said the ride was brutal. It's in Castle Rock, which makes for a tough course anyway, but the winds that day were horrible and made it that much tougher.

Freddy and some of the gang at Elephant Rock. I think he lied-it doesn't look that windy!

A couple weeks ago, my friend Shannon and I (who is also training for her first Ironmanm but she's super bad-ass and decided she wanted to do Lake Placid) decided to ditch the guys and do a girl's ride, just the two of us. Shannon did awesome and kept squealing in delight over how much fun she was having, which made for a very fun day for us! We logged 75 miles on the bike and followed that with a 20 minute run. We loved riding together and decided that we should do it more often. We may or may not have discussed doing our next Ironman together. But not anytime soon!

Freddy traveled to Iowa to run in the Marathon to Marathon with his dad, Claire. Claire has become quite the runner and will call us occasionally with a challenge for us to join him. Sadly, my work schedule kept me home for the weekend, but Freddy had an awesome time with his dad and I'm SUPER PROUD to report that Freddy PR'd (again) with a time of 1:58 and Clair took first in his age group! I could not be more happy for those two and am thrilled they got to spend the weekend together!

Freddy & Claire. Two of the speediest guys Iowa has ever seen!

This shit's gettin' real. I just opened up my training for the next couple weeks and had a mild panic-attack. My friends Jay and Frank, both accomplished Ironmen who will be joining me in Boulder, warned me last week that the next couple weeks would be brutal. They were right! Coach Marco knows how to keep me in check. He will make notes like "enjoy your 'easy' day by doing something you haven't done in a while", or "rent a funny movie and watch with friends", but a favorite of Freddy and mine is "enjoy the fitness". So, my mantra for the next month will be just this. I am enjoying the fitness. Every early morning, gu-filled, Bonk Breaker Bar, rice cake, leg-pounding second of it!