Wedding Weekend, and OOPS, I have a Half-Ironman This Weekend...

I'm back from a busy weekend of wedding festivities. I woke up back in Austin this morning super tired from the weekend but managed to drag myself out of bed for my run, and arrived at work to 10 voice mails and an inbox full of email...HELLO MONDAY. I'm going to need several more cups of coffee this morning.

Overall, it was a great weekend and really nice to see family and friends and be a part of my brother's wedding day. I even manged to get in some runs while I was there - 10 miles on Friday and 10 on Saturday - even though I was a little disapointed in the running weather in Northern VA - very un-Fall like with muggy and warm temps. For a step back week, I ended up with some decent runs. Nothing super long, but several medium-long runs.

The week went like this:
Monday - 6.01 easy, swim
Tuesday - 10 (speed work)
Wednesday - 7 (suposed to be recovery, but was more tempoish)
Thursday - 11.84 (tempo, hills)
Friday - 10.1 easy
Saturday - 10 (a little faster)
Sunday - Rest/Travel
Total miles: 55.04

When I was on the plane last night, I got an email from the High 5 Events about my upcoming Half-Ironman...this weekend. I don't know where time has gone, but for some reason, I thought I had an extra weekend in between my brother's wedding and my Half-Ironman. How is it October already? An half-ironman this weekend? Um Shit. Especially when the course profile looks like this (bike course & run course). Um, hello massive hills.

It's not like an the extra weekend would have given me any more time to really prepare for the race, but would have definitely given me more prep time to get my bike worked on (tune-up, new tires), actually ride my bike a few times, dust off my wet suit, and get caught up at work before packing for another weekend trip.

It's my sixth half-Ironman, but my first time on the Kerrville course.

So, how am I feeling? Definitely a little under-prepared, but essentially ready given the circumstances. I knew going into this race that it would just be a long training day for me. I know I can complete the race without a problem, it just won't be pretty as I haven't been biking really at all and only swimming minimally. I just found it impossible to try to fit in half-ironman training and 50-miler training. I didn't have the time, nor could my body handle all of the stress it would have caused. I can't really taper for this weekend's race either and I need to stick somewhat to my 50-mile training plan (which means at least 17 miles on Saturday), but my running endurance is there so if my feet hold up and I nail my bike nutrition, I may still be able to pull off a decent run split this Sunday.

But I'm not placing any pressure on goals this time around. I have a race plan and will stick to the plan, but it's not about setting PRs or hitting time goals. It's about my approach, my nutrition and my attitude. For each segment of the race I have guessed a finish time, but really don't care about the number. As the saying goes, "You get what you train for." I definitely could have trained better. But I've been putting in long (running) training hours on my feet and this is my sixth half-Ironman, so that might count for something. My fitness is deeper even if it hasn't been bike or swim specific training, and I know what it feels like to be 65 miles into a 70.3 race and as my husband always says, I race a lot better than I train. So, we'll see how it goes.