IM Journal: Day 2

It still hasn’t quite sunk in. With the registration process being over & done, it felt like any other day. Like most Tuesdays I was not looking forward to going to track (sorry, I know a lot of people love it. I’m not one of them) and was hoping for bad traffic, an earthquake, something to get me out of going. But even running a bit late still got me there in time before the group took off for the warm-up. I was happy to see Coach Mike and a lot of other friendly faces, & got a few Ironman comments and congratulations for even signing up and wanting to do a race.

Our little army of reflective gear and headlamps made way to the track to get our work out of 8x800 in. The one good thing about running in the dark is that you (or at least I do) run faster because you can’t see your feet J. Per usual I thought “I can’t do the whole workout. I’ll just do 6 out of the 8 or maybe I can sneak away without anyone noticing.” I never say of this out loud… it’s always an internal bargaining system I have with myself to get through a workout. My brain tells me I can’t get through a workout, so I at least start the workout to see if this is true or not, and most times (if not all I think?) I get through the whole thing! Then when it’s over I feel super awesome and somewhat surprised that I just did something I didn’t think I could do one hour ago.

I realize that this is probably going to happen for the next 55 track workouts and all of the next 362 days of training. But who’s counting?  I already don’t feel like getting up at 5am tomorrow to go swim, but know I’m still going to do it anyways. Physically- I’m absolutely capable of any & all workouts that I will get, but it’s going to be one heck of a mental battle. Even with the “easier” workouts I sometimes have a tough time getting through them, so I can only imagine what my brain will think when it knows I have an 8 hour brick!

I’m thinking sleep is an important factor here... and also rewarding myself with post-workout coffees. J