49 weeks ....

Sunday I traveled to Augusta to watch the Augusta Ironman 70.3. It’s always funny to me when I travel to triathlons. First there is the feeling of wishing I was doing the race, then I slowly return to reality and think of all the training the athletes have been through (especially for a 70.3 distance race), and I return to “cheering is fine for the day”. Witnessing the pros sprint by at a 7 minute pace to the age grouper hanging on for dear life gets my adrenaline pumping (if you’re spectating a triathlon its hard not to cheer), and to know people competing it’s electrifying (The ATC really represented well sunday). Also, it provides an enormous amount of motivation to make it to my own work outs.

Last week was a steady week for me in the work out dept., though I did skip a few workouts, I’m telling myself it is fine because I had initially planned to take two weeks off following my last race on September 12th. Now it’s time to pick things up and not skip the long weekend runs in preparation for a marathon. The run coach for the group said a few weeks back we should be averaging somewhere around 25 miles for the week, I’ve been slacking around 12 miles, and now that number increases - Yay (sarcasm). I will gradually increase my distances through the next couple of weeks to reach that point though.

This next week I’m planning to pick it up a little. I've started writing out my work outs before hand to help keep me honest. Writing out my workouts is completely new to me but I’m interested to see if it helps me, once I figure out how to put a chart in this blog i'll post them here also. 49 weeks seems really close to me for some reason, probably because I’m a little scared. I will say it’s probably best I have never witnessed a IRONMAN before registering, I saw some serious painful expressions this last weekend at the half and those looks of pain didn’t really say “You should try this”.

Congratulations to all my friends who completed the Augusta IRONMAN 70.3, you guys' determination alone fueled me for over 6 hours to bang that drum, not to mention seeing MR come out of the water in tears (super inspiring). Congratulations to all the ATC’ers, great job to you all!