Game on

I haven't blogged in awhile, and here I am with my last entry before my first race of the year!

First of all, congrats to all my friends who made it through IMAZ this past weekend. A special note goes out to Jonathan, who was having the race of his life and in the running to win the race when he was cut off by a police motorcycle making a U-turn. He had to swerve into the gravel, hit a huge bump, popped his rear wheel, bent his headset, and lost all of his nutrition (which is a seriously big deal since he has Crohn's). It took 10 minutes to get everything fixed, he knew it had taken him out of the running for his dream to win Ironman, but he kept going. Where most pros would just call it a day he pulled himself together and had the second fastest run of the day to finish sixth. That is my definition of a champion.

As for my race this weekend, I got a pleasant surprise yesterday. Tony, my Triple T partner who was going to Kinetic this weekend with me to do the sprint, changed his registration to the Half! It will be a lot of fun to cheer each other on in the race. I think he's going to really surprise himself.

As for weather, well it is looking absolutely perfect:



Sat
Apr 19
Partly Cloudy
High 83°
Low 57°

Chance of Rain 10%

Certainly can't complain about THAT for an April race!

I am feeling really fit and my super awesome taper week is going REALLY well. Last weekend I was a tad worried. My heart rate was 10-15 BPM depressed when I did my Saturday brick. Of course, stubborn me still did my 45 minutes of straight zone 3 by heart rate, which meant 45 minutes of zone 4-5 effort. But surprisingly the brick run was still fabulous and averaged 8:10 miles for 5 miles. But I knew that the heart rate issue was a warning sign to back down. Couldn't come at a more perfect time! I had just been talking to The Oracle and I told him that all my training felt great except my running. That I felt like I had lead legs. He told me that we must be doing something wrong. The week before taper EVERYTHING should feel like crap. I talked to him about the brick and we dialed back my Sunday run and the rest of my week has gone more or less according to plan (except for missing one swim). Every workout has zone 4 intervals but they are getting shorter and shorter. Today is the lightest day with a 20 minute run with 4 x 30 race pace. My heart rate has bounced right back up and I feel ready.

Heading out to Lake Anna tomorrow morning. Going to take a dip in the lake, go for a short ride, preview the course, register and then relax. It's been so long since I've raced that it should definitely be an interesting experience. I've gone through my transitions in my head a million times and come up with a pretty good race plan. But I will be leaving it all out on the course, so it could get fun...