why (ironman training so far)

Why (are you doing an ironman)? With true interest or questioning my sanity, I always find myself a bit dumbfounded by the question. Images from my childhood rush through my mind, the many times that I stood in front of my parents after doing something (bad) posed with the same question -- why. Oh I just wanted to see how electricity works. It’s just a small fire. It’s so amazing that the radio can pull music from the air. Don’t you want to see what’s inside? With an ironman, isn’t it obvious? It’s for the sexy body of course. I don’t get why everyone wouldn’t do it.

Although with only three weeks left I question my own sanity trying to attempt it. If you've been following, I’ve crashed a couple of times right at the beginning of the year, which put my bike racing season in the rough (Senior Open was just here in Sahalee). I pushed through it and made my basic race goals. Though, it wasn’t a stellar year. With roughly 10 weeks after bike racing, I switched over to triathlon training. Well I felt like a fish out of water, a three legged cheetah, a featherless peacock -- you get the idea. I felt awkward ramping up in the run and especially the swim (where I wanted to be a fish in water). Then I got sick for a week and a half. I restarted again. Two and half weeks of solid training and threw down my best half-iron distance race at 5:09 and podium at the same time. It was a practice race so I can work out the kinks. Well I had a lot of kinks to work out. By the end of the race both of my feet were raw and bloody and severe chafing in other places. It took me at least a week to heal enough to train again in any of the events. That puts me at the here and now and why I still question my chances of finishing. I can’t run.

I’ve always had problems with my knees and any down time from running resets me to step one. I start off with three, then seven, then eleven miles (yes, I only run Fibonacci numbers), which takes a week or more to ramp up for each of these stages. Usually after a short hiatus from training I can still ramp-up quickly, but this time my knees are failing me. So with only two weeks of training and three before the race, I still am struggling with the run with a lot of knee pain. Can I get through this in the next couple of weeks? Sadly, beyond the risk of not being able to complete my first ironman, I know for a fact that a three-legged cheetah would still be faster than me.

So with only a few weeks left to go, I ask myself why? The answer is because I can (and I want a sexy body).