Ironman Training Week 22 recap & "Suck it up"

Happy day after the 4th of July! Hope you all got your fill of food, family, friends and fireworks over the past few days. We luckily had perfect weather here yesterday - in the 70s and sunny finally...They say summer arrives in Seattle on July 4th and they weren't kidding!

I'll fill you in on my day in a minute, but because I know you're dying to know, here is a recap of the last week of training:

Ran: 27.6 miles
Biked: 139.96 miles
Swam: 1.36 miles (I missed a swim workout due to donating blood!)
Total mileage: just shy of 169
Total time: about 14 hours including 3 double workout days

Last Sunday I went for one of my longest bike rides yet. I felt great throughout but look it a bit easy since it started to rain, and then downpour so I was cautious on the hills and with the debris in the bike lane. Evidence of the weather - I was covered in dirt:

My Team Tough Chik socks that WERE white!

So onto a recap of my 4th of July!

Since the Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3 race is next weekend, my friend Aaron wanted to ride the course with me to give me an idea of what to expect. And let me just say - Ironman course designers:

You people are slightly whacko.

This was by far the hardest bike ride I have ever done. There is not one portion of it that is flat. The entire 56 miles. Yes, it's pretty and lots of things to look at, but there were times when I was going less than 4 miles an hour up the hills. That's pretty much going backwards. Then there were downhills where I was going 30mph+. Scary steep.

Oh and the worse part of the course is miles 40-50 where the hills are pure evil and actually brought me to tears. I know, right?! There's no crying in triathlon! Suck it up!

I did not walk my bike, though, which honestly was a moral victory for me. I thought many times I was going to have to go sit on the side of the road and wait for a sag wagon to arrive.

Thank God Aaron was there to push me through and thank God I now know what to expect next weekend. I'm scared out of my mind, but as Coach Roman told me: take it one mile at a time and for this race - "Finishing is Winning".

That's an understatement.

After we finished the bike of death, we set out to run 3 miles of the course as well. Luckily the hills on the run are nothing like the bike else I may have called it quits and not even raced. (I know, stop being a whimp and suck it up...) Although my legs felt like cement pilars, I was actually going at a good clip, about 8:00 pace, so gave me a *slight* confidence boost..for like a second. Then I remembered I still have to do 1.2 miles in the water AND 10 more miles on the run than I did yesterday.

Confidence = gone...but just suck it up!

The crazy thing is I actually wasn't too terribly sore the rest of the day and felt fine overall which is odd considering how miserable I was during my 4 hour adventure earlier in the day.  After posting about my ride to Facebook, I got this note back from my friend Eric Wunderlich, who is a former collegiate (Univ. of Michigan...boo! haha!) and Olympic swimmer (i.e. super fast):

"Suck it up - even though you were only a Spartan you are tougher than most of the women racing your 70.3. Go get em EOM"

Aside from the dig on my Spartans (I knew he would do that since he bleeds blue), I really appreciated this note, especially coming from someone I have admired and looked up to since I was 14 years old. He was integral in helping me with my swim techniques when I was in high school.

So I'm going to take a different mental approach to the race next weekend and just try to go and enjoy as much of it as I can and not worry about my time. There is no way I'll come close to a PR so I'll do my best and see what happens and:

The rest of the day was spent with Rob, Julia and our friend AJ having some drinks, lots of food and enjoying fireworks - just what I needed!

future fire person?!

she loved the fireworks even though they were a bit loud!

not bad for our small city!

Questions for you:

1) Have you had a training run/event recently where you just wanted to quit completely?

2) How do you handle going into a race knowing it won't be your best?

3) How was your 4th of July?