Final Thoughts before the Race

Okay its T-6 days until the big race, so here are my final thoughts...  Do I feel ready for it?  Nope!   Will I ever feel ready for it?  Nope!   Am I scared to death?  Yup!    Am I excited to see what this challenge has in store for me?  Yup!

So my ultimate goal is to finish the race, preferably smiling :)   I’m still nervous about not making the course cut-off times.   As long as everything goes well, I should be okay. 

So the race is this Saturday.  We will go to the expo and drop of our run stuff on Friday.   On Saturday my Swim wave starts at 8:36am.   The swim course cut-off time is 9:57 AM.  The swim is in a river where we swim .6 miles upstream and then .6 miles downstream.   Assuming the current isn’t super strong and I can make it up stream I hope to finish the swim in about 50 minutes.    

Next comes the bike portion.  This will be a 56 mile bike ride starting in the town of Guerneville and finishing in Windsor.  I’m told to expect a bumpy ride with lots of rolling hills.  I’ve also been warned of chalk hill at mile 45 which is a 385 ft climb. The total elevation change for the bike course is approximately 1897 ft and the bike cut-off time is 3:00pm.  I’m assuming it will take me about 4hr to do the bike ride, thats equivalent to a 14mph pace.   (I did a 42 mile ride last weekend with similar terrain at a 14.5 mph pace).    

Then comes the dreaded run.  It includes several rolling hills that will prove challenging especially after 5+ hours of exercise.   I’m capable of running a half marathon in 2 hrs 20 mins.  However, I’m going to be realistic in knowing that I’m going to be running on fumes at that time, and hope to do the run in 3 hrs.  

So, the cut-off time for entire race is 5:06 pm. If I combine my expected course times, with the assumption of 20 minutes total of transition time, bathroom breaks and fuel stops, I expect to finish around 4:47pm.  That gives me about 20 minutes of padding to the official course cut off time. 

Everything is definitely do-able, I just have to be mentally ready for this challenge.   I have put in the hours of training and now I just have to get out there and do it :)

I’m looking forward to the weekend and the experience.  Hopefully in my next post I can say I have successfully completed a Half Iron Man.  Stay tuned!

2 Weeks and Counting!

So I started freaking out a little on Friday when I got my first “good luck” from someone who was going to be on vacation for the next two weeks. Isn’t it a little early for good lucks??? I mean the race is still... oh wait 2 WEEKS AWAY!!!  EEK!   

Do I feel ready?  That's an easy answer, NOPE!   I would love to have another 4 weeks of training, but I’m not that lucky.   Looking back to the training plan,  I feel I stuck to about 75% of it.  I think thats pretty good considering I was juggling work, training, husband, friends, and vacations.   

My training has included 4 various distance triathlons to get me use to the entire race environment.  For the swimming part of my training I participated 2+ hours a week in a masters swim program at my gym.  The bike training consisted of riding to and from work once a week,  and then several longer rides (3+ hours) with Jerusha (another crazy person who signed up for this race with me) on the weekend. The longest ride was 54 miles (Note: I would have loved to get 1 more 50+ ride in to feel more prepared for the ride).  I feel like the area of training I slacked off the most on was running.   If my schedule only allowed for one activity, running was usually the one I skipped.  But now its the one I'm scared of the most in the race.  My running training consisted of several shorter runs during the week, and then a long run on sunday post the long saturday rides.   Most of my long runs were at a slower pace than I would have liked but I keep telling myself the slowness is due to the legs being tired and sore from the ride the day before.    

But there is good news with being so close to the race, it means I get to start tapering :) My training for the next two weeks is going to be about resting my muscles and not going overboard.   The last weekend work outs is a basic bike-run brick (2hrs at the most) followed by a quick Sunday ride.  I can definitely handle that :)

Even though I’m backing off on the workouts, I have a feeling these next two weeks are going to go by fast and race day is going to be here before I know it.