9 DAYS!

I looked up my email yesterday to find my Tremblant Ironman 70.3 registration and the date I registered was September 20^th, 2011. Now 9 months later I am just 9 days away from race day. This is both exciting and nerve racking.

I am super excited to finally, after a lot of hard work and sacrifices, be able to complete my goal of a HIM. On the other hand, there were workouts missed and workouts where I didn’t quite get to do the fully planned set and therefore I feel I may not be trained enough. That being said, I don’t think any amount of training would ever make me feel fully prepared; this is a long day ahead. Sure I’ve done marathons but the longest continuous exercise I have ever done was about 4.5 hours, next weekend it will be at the very least 6 but more likely closer to 7 hours. That is definitely intimidating.

Questions that have been going through my head this past week are all related to minor details. Like, this is a super long race, I am a pasty kid who burns easily, sun tan lotion even the sport stuff put on before I swim will not work….so what am I going to do? Well after asking around and getting a few suggestions I have decided to go with a spray on sun tan lotion that I can get on really quickly in the swim to bike transition. Another one, littering anywhere outside of the aid station areas is a violation. I believe this is a really good rule but I have to make sure that I have a garbage pocket either on me or in my bento box. Mostly this is an on bike concern, as that is where I am going to ingest the most food and beverage.

Overall though I feel prepared for this race, as I have put in a lot of training and I had a chance to bike the tremblant bike course a couple of weeks ago. I was super worried about the hills before actually doing them. There are definitely some tough ones but the steepest hills are the shortest and the longest hills are not too bad. Biking Gatineau park has definitely built some leg strength for those hills.

Last weekend we raced a sprint triathlon on the Saturday following our last hard training week, so I went into the race pretty tired. There wasn’t enough time to taper as the taper for tremblant was beginning right after the race so didn’t want to start that too early. The race went well, I learned that the crashing and fighting for your spot in the swim is really no different than fighting for the puck in a corner and instead of freaking out, my competitive streak came in to play, and I pushed my way through. I am however, thinking with the longer swim distance at tremblant, that there will be a bit more space for the majority of the race. The bike was alright, the legs were still pretty tired so I took a bit of time to warm up, but I got up to speed about 5km in. Then when it came to the run I felt great. I just started picking people off in my age group (our age is listed on our calf) and climbed my way up to 4^th place. The difference between third and me was over a minute so I didn’t even see them to try and catch them but ah well. The goal of the race was to practice for tremblant and working on transitions…note, my shorts did not fall down when I took off my wetsuit, and I was able to do it without falling over :) 

 

Now to the race, I’ll be sure to report on how it went afterwards.