Something about hay (or cake)

Some athletes say the hay is in the barn when taper starts, others say the cake is baked...well, whether its hay in the barn or a baked cake..my major training is done. I am doing this thing. After three years of training we are two weeks from race day.

A few great things have happened in the past few weeks...I have run some surprisingly fast miles, I have finished some solid bike rides, I have been in the lake and pool...my job is great...I went to a conference...the Speed Factory Racing team and Coach Sean had an amazing sendoff for me, and gave me a gift certificate for a massage that I had yesterday and it was AMAZEBALLS. Ask me about yoga balm.

Other things, eh...the worst being that I was nearly hit by a car while riding yesterday...I swerved and stopped fast, but David was behind me and he hit my leg, then went down hard. He's very banged up, but will be ok. I'm fine, just a tire burn on my calf.

I need to spend the next two weeks focused on recovering from niggles, letting stress out, prepping for the race, and staying away from germs.

Here's what it took (this year) to get here:

September

Swim 19.93 miBike 412 miRun 108 mi

YTD

Swim 175.15 miBike 2,771 miRun 758 mi

Oh, and losing 40 lbs this year...there's that too.

I appreciate thoughts and well wishes for the race. I am focused on the things I can control, and managing the things I can't.

She believed she could...

Comments

Iron Rose 2020

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I'm a planner. And a dork. And I wrote a lot of Vision 2020 plans around 2000 so now that it is 2020 everything feels weird. Ok, that's out of my system. Let's talk about 2020. I've already done a self-assessment of last year and met with coach to plan 2020. Everything is focused on Ironman Wisconsin on September 13.The milestones have been set, but there will be some infill along the way. Milestone 1: Carmel Marathon - I did a spring marathon (also Carmel) in 2018 ahead of Louisville and it seemed like a good idea to do that again. So for the 10th Carmel Marathon I am running the full. Spring marathons feel undertrained compared to fall because the time between recovering from fall and getting ramped up to multiple 20 mile training runs is not there. I take the spring effort as a see what happens sort of race. Must finish to keep the streak alive, but I will see how everything else unfolds. Milestone 2: TourdeLou - not so much of a race as a supported event ride ...

72cent

I don't remember when exactly ME first floated the idea of a 3/4 Ironman distance training race, but I do know it was on tap by the end of last year's review/2017 planning. We picked a date between Grand Rapids 70.3 and Steelhead 70.3, which happened to be last Saturday - which is consistent with me doing an event intended to try to kill me right before my birthday (RAIN, Muncie 70.3, and Muskoka 70.3 are recent examples). I got my personal support team of Tom and Trena on board early. I would need them to help me plan and get through the day and they were enthusiastically on board. David was slated to ride the first lap of the ride and run point for the day...which eventually got reshuffled a tiny bit with the realization that NITE Ride in Indy was that night and he loves riding it. Plan A was for Ft. Ben to be the venue, but in reality it is hillier than necessary out there so we moved it to Carmel (Monon Center). I had visited Lindsay to work through exten...

My First Marathon (x2)

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