Calm before the storm

It’s very close to the race now, so close that I can feel it. In fact one week from know it will all be over. In fact one week from now I’ll be sitting at the awards dinner chowing on some good food. I’ll know the results of the race, how I did, how others did. And it will all be in the past. I’ll have a nice week of vacation in the American Southwest to look forward to. A hike in the Grand Canyon, all sorts of awesome things.

Except right now none of those awesome things matter, the lunch doesn’t matter. At this point in time the only thing that matters about the trip is the race. To be honest I’m not sure I like that, but like the Oracle said in Matrix Reloaded “We can never see past the choices we don’t understand.” It’s not really a choice and I really don’t even need to understand it, but at this point IM Arizona is a huge thing in front of me that I have to get past first. I’m really looking forward to it, there is a lot of anticipation in my mind – will I remember everything, did I train right, did I train enough, will I pace it right, will I eat enough? All these questions are racing through my mind

What makes it worse right now is that even though all this nervous energy is building up inside I can’t go do anything to expend it, right now my body needs rest.

The good news is that my training the last week or so has been pretty good. Yesterday I went for 1:45 on the trainer at a pretty steady effort and followed it up with a 3.6 mile run (26 minutes flat), which was my fastest ever. Saturday was a pretty easy type day – with part of it spent watching Mary run a half marathon, she did great 1:48, a 1 minute PR, in cold, windy conditions. It was really hard for me to spectate. I wanted to suit up and go run and see what I’m capable of. It seemed a shame to show up at a race with the fitness I have and just watch – grrrrrr. It kills me to speculate about how fast I could have gone, it just flat out drives me nuts. It has taken a lot of effort on my part to try and not speculate.

Not much more to ramble on about….oh yes I do have some more. A huge thanks to the people at Oomph. They came through with a huge homerun for me – and got a pair of Vigor Compression shorts, and a Tri Singlet in my hands even though the shorts were out of stock. I’m super stoked about getting them in time for Arizona this weekend. Thanks Scott and Julie! FWIW – you’ve earned a link on my links page!