run this amazing day

No matter how hard I try to avoid it, the last few days before a race always have some anxiety.  Stress, tears, fret, worry.  Cozumel was no different.  There was a lot to do and it was busy and disorganized and swims were getting canceled and drop-offs were changing and I tried, I really did try to be zen about everything, to just go with the flow.  But I was carrying a little lump of stress, a serious and stern little black storm cloud was following me.  When I got back to the hotel after bike drop-off Saturday afternoon, Allison had arrived.  We changed into our swim suits and tried to get into the ocean (one last attempt to swim with the jellyfishes before race morning), but we couldn't, so instead we hopped in the pool and splashed around and took goofy pictures with the underwater camera.  And when I laughed out loud, finally, honestly laughed, it felt like the first time in days.  Like my chest opened up and let lightness back inside, like ...

I've said it about twenty dozen times in the past several hours, but I'm going to say it once more.  Anything can happen on race day. Anything.

If I could draw a circle around me with chalk, I said to the poet the other day, I would draw the tiniest circle that I could, and you would still be inside of it. And then Graham would shove his butt between us , he replied. The week leading up to ironman is a quiet time for me, I've discovered.  It's not a time to be bursting with energy and socializing and tweeting a million pictures of the M-dot logo.  It's definitely not a time to be using the words crush  or smash  or destroy .  That isn't what ironman is about, not for me.  So, for maybe the only time in my life, I pipe down.  I spent the week leading up to Lake Placid talking quietly with my husband, having deep and peaceful conversations with good friends, reading alone, or sometimes just sitting quietly with my thoughts.  I leave the iPod packed away, I let the TV shows wait, I stay off of twitter except for the occasional hit-and-run post, I give the volume button on my ...

Since I am getting closer to ironman time, it  means some workouts with the words "test" or "TT" are showing up on my schedule.  Now, I love training.  I really do, I'd almost rather just train and train than race, races are scary gahhhhh, but training, I love it.  It drips happy juice into my life.  But testing or time trialing or whatever you want to call it, it brings up a feeling in me that I only recently began to pinpoint as dread.  Dread and fear. Now, why, when I love to train so much, why do I dread these sessions?  Send me out for a long run and tell me to run 60 minutes at MAF and I'm happy as a clam, but send me to the track for a six mile MAF test and I'll do my warm-up and then dither and dally and scuff my feet and poke around and retie my shoes and look around for someone who is going to kick me off for being on the track during school hours until I finally have to say out loud, Just go already, sheesh and then it STILL tak...