Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The Ironman Cometh

This is it, I'm off to Utah to race this weekend in St. George.  A lot has been going on with me lately, but it's been all good news and somehow I've kept my stress level low.  I've been busy.  So busy that things at home have kind of taken a dive - my sink is full of dishes, my refrigerator is bare, and my laundry is strewn about the place.  It's a dump.  Why?
Last weekend KT ran in the Los Angeles Ragnar Relay, and I volunteered to drive the van.  This race is nuts - a twelve person, 28 hour, 200 mile running relay from Ventura to Dana Point.  It basically consists of running a stage of 4 to 9 miles, then handing the baton to a teammate, jumping in a van, waiting 9 hours for your next turn, repeat.  It ended up being 18 miles of running for her with 90 minutes of sleep over 28 hours.  Then, she slept for 3 hours - got up at 4:45AM on Sunday and ran the La Jolla half marathon.  Plus, she still beat my half marathon PR by 5 minutes!  The girl is tough.
This weekend is Ironman St. George, one of the toughest IM races on the planet.  I've been packing, strategizing, buying a new equipment (why not wear a new wetsuit for the first time at an IM race?), and generally freaking out.  On top of everything else, I bought my first house - and escrow closes 3 days after the race.  Everything has gone smoothly, but I'm nervous about signing the check!
With regards to the race, coach and I have a plan.  I'm not sure I like the plan - but I agree with it and think it's a good idea.  It basically involves me going slow on the bike.  Real slow.  So slow that people will ask "what the hell happened to you on the bike?".  At IMAZ in 2008 I completed the 112 miles in 5 hours, 40 minutes.  My projections for this weekend put me at somewhere around 7 hours.  Yikes, my sit bones are gonna ache.  Why go so slow?  So I can run.  I've been running a lot lately, 30 mile weeks pretty regularly which is a ton for someone like me.  I feel pretty good about the marathon, though it still scares the bejeesus out of me.  The plan is to be able to run strong for 26.2 miles, and possibly beat my IMAZ marathon time by an hour - even on a much tougher course.  At IMAZ my marathon ended at mile 9, at which point it turned into a walk/run survival event.  If everything goes perfectly (when has that ever happened?) I will finish the race in about the same amount of time it took me to do IMAZ.  That would be amazing, considering the difficulty of the Utah course. 
I'm grateful to be able to compete this weekend.  I'm healthy, happy and ready to re-earn my M-dot!  Thanks everyone for getting me here, we'll celebrate after the final exam.

1 comment:

Nina said...

Hi,

I recently came across your blog and thought you might be interested in writing a guest blog for The Clymb. We're a private sale network for a vast array of outdoor brands that include running, biking, climbing, skiing, snowboarding and other outdoor/athletic accessories.

We’re running a blog series asking outdoor enthusiasts to tell us about their Clymbs. A Clymb can be the motivation behind climbing a mountain or getting up before the sun to go for a run. The blog should reveal how you got started in the sport, what inspires you, and what you’ve gained or learned.

We think our members would be interested in why people participate in certain activities and that it’d be a pretty fun read. We’ll link back to your blog in the post, tweet about it and share it with our fans on Facebook. We have a wide reach and you should get new readers because of it.

Here are a few blogs that we recently ran from some climbers:

http://theclymb.com/blog/2010/07/heights-fear-and-respect/

http://theclymb.com/blog/2010/06/be-safe-live-long-climb-hard-by-rick-radliff/

We’d also love it if you accepted the invitation for a free membership below:

http://theclymb.com/invite-from/TriBlogger

Twice a week, members receive deals on popular athletic brands like DAKINE, SIGG, and Mountain Khakis. Once you become a member, you'll have your own invite code you can share with your friends. Upon shipment of their first order, you'll receive a $10 credit for your own future purchases. (That's $10 per first shipment for each person you sign up).

Also, if you know of other triathletes with blogs that might be interested, please let me know.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Nina Perez
Social Media Manager, The Clymb
nina@theclymb.com