Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Race Week!!!

Birthday weekend was super fun, lots of food, our friends joined us at our favorite wine bar, stayed out way too late and possibly 3-4 glasses of wine later, I hit the pillow hard!!!

Fear not, I still got up to do my five hour ride on my actual birthday. I must say it was then that I realized..this is IT. I am so close to Ironman, i'm *ready* to race and very excited!

Not only that, but by "it," I mean this is my last Ironman for a long time (I won't say "last one ever" because life is long =0).

While I love triathlon, my coach, the discipline and I loved racing Florida, I also recognize I like balance in my life and with me working and training and Dave working 60+ hours a week, we get very little time together. I find myself as the season goes on getting more excited to race, but, I also very much look forward to spending more time relaxing on weekends. I need to find a happy medium between training/racing and chilling.

I rode on my birthday grateful being able to have this time in my life to just "go out and ride," and I appreciate that very much. However, there was a huge part of me that just wanted to be home. There were a few times in the ride, I literally almost turned around, I wasn't mad that I had to ride five hours, it was just me coming to heads with the realization that as much as I love training, I have a limit and i've reached it. Ironman is wonderful and i've been so lucky to have a spouse who doesn't even blink when I say on his only day off that I have a five, six, seven hour day ahead of me. I can't even say I would be that supportive!! Very rarely do I get personal on my blog, but tonight, I found myself thinking about Ironman and training as it comes to an end here in the next few weeks and I get ready for the big day.

My feelings from this weekend isn't that I don't want to train, or Ironman stinks, or anything like that, it's just that I realize my time with Dave is so incredibly limited with his call schedule and work schedule in general, I feel like shorter distances would be better suited for me in the future. If he worked "normal" people hours and didn't have to study all the time and wasn't exhausted from being on call, then maybe I wouldn't mind being gone so long, but I miss him while i'm training!! I probably miss him more than he misses me, as he's always like "GO, get outta here, you need to get your train on," as I procrastinate around the house....

Some people probably roll their eyes at this, but seriously if I saw him day in and day out and we had regular schedules, then I probably wouldn't hesitate to race longer distances, but for me, i'd like to switch back to half's and olympic distances in the future and save Ironman for later when we have a few kids and they're begging us to go to Hawaii maybe I can write some sort of "begging" letter for a Kona lottery slot!!

Ok, now that i've gotten that off my mind....let me reassure you I am SO excited to race this weekend. I love racing and i'm so glad Amanda kinda told me i'd be happy I was racing this weekend and I am!! I'm driving out Friday and staying with Dave's parents. Typical people put Dave on call this weekend out of nowhere so i'm going solo, but i'm ok with that! I'm excited to hang out with my in-laws and relax and do some racing! It's supposed to be REALLY hot, but knowing that I won't be surprised and just prepared with salt and water.

I am headed to bed.....after I finally cleaned the downstairs bathroom which was a total disaster after Dave and I decided last night at 9:00 p.m that our dogs were filthy. Man, the bath water was so dirty...we felt like horrible pet owners but washing my dogs was like the 900th thing on my list and groceries and clean underwear were at the very top. Now, both dogs are clean and I got down on my hands and knees to see to it that all the Parma (our little dingo looking dog) hair was GONE from the shower....scrubbed clean with Comet and the floor no longer had hair all over it.

Off to bed!

5 comments:

beth said...

good luck this weekend!
sounds like you've reached "that point"...but you are ready for the big one!

have a blast in soma, sorry dave can't come :( and get to bed earlier? what's this postinging at nearly 11pm! race week girls need their rest!
:)

Anonymous said...

Can hardly wait to see you this weekend and watch the race.

Bonnie

Unknown said...

Look at me Mer! Thought I'd check out the blog since it's RACE WEEK!! I can't believe it popped up so fast! That's CRAZY! I'll be thinking of you this week! Love, Jill

Paul said...

Good luck! you're gonna nail it. I always do two cups of ice down the shorts at aid stations to stay cool!
haha

Jennifer Harrison said...

MER ! GOOD luck -you have worked soo hard and have done a super job, go out there and have the race of your life!!! And, then short next year (short course!)....can't wait to hear how it goes! GO GO GO ! :) JEN H.