run this amazing day

The Pat Summitt quote about taking things away was in my head daily leading up to ironman.   He takes away things so we can fly.   When I was tired, or sore, or on a forty-five minute run that felt like how in the living fuck am I supposed to run twenty-six miles next weekend;  I pound-signed it at least one bazillion times on instagram in my ongoing quest to irritate the world with asshole hashtags, every time I felt frustrated or stuck or like it was a hopeless and stupid thing to be attempting with the fitness & body I had, I came back to it.   So we can fly.  So we can fly.  So we can fucking fly. I jogged out of transition as carefully as I could, still rocking the shape of a bicycle with my butt in the bucket and my belly full to the brim.  I rarely look at data on the run in triathlon; I record it so I can send it to my coach and that maybe helps me be 1% more accountable to not getting pissed off and walking when I can't magically run 7:30 pace but I don't look.

The first thing I did on the bike was start shoveling bars into my mouth.  I knew that the day was going to warm up & I wanted to get in as many calories as I could right off the bat (warning: be prepared to be grossed out by how much I ate on the bike).  I remember looking down at my Garmin to note that I had an entire Bobo's Bar finished by eight minutes into the ride.  Miniature fist pump inside my head: sometimes it's the little things. My plan was simply to go by feel and glance at heart rate every now and then.  Nearly all of the riding I had done in the month before the race had been done by heart rate or even effort alone.  The very little work I had done while watching the power meter simply felt like dialing all my internal pacing thermometers back in.  I decided not to look at power at all because I couldn't think of any reason why it would be useful for this particular day.  I wasn't trying to race, I was trying to see how far I could get, and I know

The day before was a bit more stressful than usual.  And it wasn't until I was laying on the ground hidden in my earphones an hour before the race started that I was able to pinpoint why: I was fucking terrified.  I'll admit it.  I know how much ironman hurts.  I'm well-acquainted with the level of suffering it brings, and after volunteering at IM Vineman and IM Boulder, it was fresh in my mind.  I've never gone into an ironman even close to as underprepared as I was at Coeur d'Alene, and it left me feeling a bit at loose ends in terms of what to expect on race day.   Race morning.  I got in and out of transition early and quite quickly and then hot-footed my way up the hill, away from the madness.  My best races are the ones that start with some quiet time, plugged into a mellow song on repeat, just breathing and emptying my mind.  I made several porta potty trips and chased them all with swigs of Pepto - being worried about my recently-trashed-by-antibiotics GI