It's getting closer...

Sorry that the last couple of posts have been the length of short novels. I'll do my best to make sure this is not the case this time, but I'm not making any promises.

Well, it is the Monday of race week. All of the tough workouts are in the bank, and there's nothing left to do but do a few shorter ones to keep things moving, rest, get a massage or two, not eat to much in the beginning of the week and eat way too much at the end of the week. Oh, and try not to die of boredom with all of this new found free time.

So, the last bunch of workouts weren't so great, but I know from experience that I am terrible at tapering. I mean, I have no problem with the resting part. By the time all of that crazy training is over I have no problem with scaling it back. It's just that none of those workouts ever seem to go very well. Fortunately, I have lots of experience behind me to tell me that no matter how crappy those last workouts go, it is probably no indication at all of what race day might be like. I'm not one of those people who 'nails' these last workouts. In fact, I vividly remember one of my last long rides two weeks before my Ironman PR where I was slower than I'd ever been, couldn't get my heart rate up, and spent much of it seriously considering throwing my bike off a bridge somewhere and curling up under a tree to cry.

So, no, I don't let it bother me. Amazingly, this is my 7th year in a row racing in Lake Placid. This year I was supposed to skip it, but things didn't exactly go according to plan. I've had good races, terrible races, and amazing races there. For some reason my swim split, however, is always almost exactly the same - literally all 6 splits so far are within 42 seconds of each other. The only reason I don't have high hopes this year for finally braking out of that streak is that the latest participant list has about 3000 people on it. I'll be lucky if I make it out of the water alive let alone with a swim PR. But let's try not to think about that too much right now...

Placid, for obvious reasons, has some great memories for me. Even in the one race that didn't go according to plan I didn't necessarily have a bad day out there. Bad performance-wise, sure, but I chose not to let it bother me too much. I was coming back from injury and it was probably a miracle I was able to finish at all. But there is something just so great about that town. I love it enough that I seriously could live there. It's just too bad I never get a chance to hang around in town much afterward.

It's crazy to think that this is Ironman #7 for me up there, and starting line #14 (hopefully finish #13) I still vividly remember heading up there for my first, and all of the anxiety surrounding my ability to even finish the race for the entire year before starting from the moment I registered from my computer at work that Monday morning. I'm going to have to admit that in years past I've felt more ready than I do right now, but given the fact that we were scrambling a bit after St. George, that's somewhat understandable. All I can do is the best that I can.

The bike is tuned up with some new parts and ready to go, massage and a day off scheduled for tomorrow, nothing much left to do but continue waiting...

See? Apparently I can write something less than a novel. Although it was pretty darn boring. My brain also turns to mush during the taper...