"A Big Day"

16 Days

Last Weeks Totals
Swim: 7900 yards
Bike: 135.4 miles
Run: 31.9 miles

Last week was my last week of hard workouts. From here on out it's time to taper down to race day. Meaning that workouts will fall in amongst more rest days and they will be far less arduous then they used to be. This is the time that we try to let the muscles recover and rebuilt from the last 5 months of training and hopefully end up stronger than when I started. But of course we couldn't end the hard stuff with anything less then "A Big Day", at least that's what the coach called it.

I had been looking forward in awkward anticipation to this day for months. I knew that it loomed in the horizon but wasn't exactly sure when it was going to happen.

The original plan for this day was to swim the full 2.4 miles, then take a few hours of recovery, ride for 5:00, another few hours of recovery then a 1:20 run. The purpose, I'm told, is to get the feeling of what it's like to go all day. Unfortunately some of the more important workouts don't always seem to go as planned. The original plan was to swim at the lake but Kati had to go into school Saturday morning and preferred, understandably, that I not swim at the lake alone. So then it was off to the pool for 80 laps, no excited about this. I got up at 4:30, to try and simulate race morning wake up time, and began eating my race day breakfast. 1 bagel with peanut butter, 1 bottle of Ensure, Gatorade, and 2 Gu's - one 45 mins. and one 15 mins. before I was to get into the pool. That's approx. 1,100 calories before most people were even awake for the day.

So I get to the pool around 7:00, when the swim leg of the race would start, and to my surprise the gym was not opened yet. So I drive to another one, not open. I call a third and there's no answer. What respectable gym isn't open at 7:00 on a Saturday? LA Fitness that's which one. So I got the coach on the horn and we decided to bypass the swim for the day. My Big Day is now turning into not such a big day.

I proceeded to drive down to Cedar Hill to find the closest thing I could to race day climbing. The schedule was for a 5 hour ride no matter how many miles that ended up being. The last time that I drove down to Cedar Hill I forgot my helmet so this time I made sure that I had all the essentials, that is except sunscreen.

The ride went remarkably well considering the wind and that I was riding solo. The whole thing was over before I knew it. That's one thing that's been interesting to see happen over the last few months. Workouts that once seem daunting have now become the norm and no more unusual then having to go to work. A five hour ride used to be something that I fretted over during the week and now unless the ride is over 100 miles I don't even think about it until the night before as I'm getting my gear together for the next day. I guess that was really the goal in all of this. As I pulled in at 5:20 the ride ended up being a little under 90 miles. Not a bad day on the bike.

I would have preferred at this point to throw on my running shows and bang out the 1:20 run that was scheduled for later in the day just to see how my legs would feel on a hilly run with that many miles underneath them but I had to obey the coach or face his wrath. So I drove home.

I was supposed to take a few hours to recover and eat. I made the mistake of laying down on the couch and watching the world championship cyclocross race and ended up falling asleep in the process. What was intended to be a 2 hour rest turned into 3 before I got out the door for my run.

I wish I could say that something eventful happened on the run but it was just a regular run on tired legs and nothing more.

It's kind of strange to think that the last long day is behind me now and that whatever physical and mental gains I've made over the last 5 months are all I'm going to have going into race day. Sure, over the the next few weeks as my muscles recover I'll gain some more strength but at this point what I have now is what I'm going to have on race day and that's a little frightening. I find myself looking back on all the long rides and runs and wondering if there is something else that I could have done more of or harder or longer to make myself feel more prepared but since this is my first Ironman I guess I don't know what it's supposed to feel like to be prepared so I have to assume that I am.