"Extraneous-ness" IMTX

Post-race festivities with my awesome, awesome friends in Houston.  I am now back home- happy and swollen.  

Before I write the full race report, I thought it might be good to get down in writing some pre-race considerations.

I chose this race basically because it was the only thing open.  It was Texas or St George.  I wanted to do St. George, but Tim suggested Texas because the travel would be easier, and he thought it would be a good idea to get experience on all types of courses.  I signed up for IMTX, and immediately lost all motivation to do the race.

We had a great winter, but I still just couldn't get up for the race.  It was going to be a flat, hot, draft fest in my mind- all of the things that I hate.   I was having a lot of pain on my bike.   I had planned to really work on my run speed over the winter, but it didn't happen.  I think I got on the track twice. Just blah blah blah.

Thank goodness Hillary put the bug in my ear to come train in Tucson in the spring.  I got re-fitted on my bike (that deserves a whole post of its own) and climbed away in the mountains with my new best friends.  Hillary and I made a plan for my swim.

Game on.

Then I got Parsonage-Turner's Syndrome (which I still have).  4 weeks of no swimming followed by 4 more weeks of very limited swimming, and all of the positive energy I had coming out of camp just vanished.  On top of my deflated spirit, I started to get out of shape with the loss of the swim and other strength activities that require shoulder function.  (I still can't lift more than 5-8 pounds over my head with my left arm).

I did Nola 70.3 as my first race of the year.  While I didn't feel completely out of shape, I did feel the side effects of loss of strength, weight gain, and less overall fitness with decreased swimming.  Now I really didn't want to go to Texas.

This all sounds so negative, right?  I was fighting it, for sure.  I wanted to be positive and kept grinding away, but I never felt amazing or ready to go kick butt at the race.  I LOVE that feeling...the one where you just know you are ready to kill it.   I didn't have that.  I was calling my friends and sharing my worries about my doing this race when the training was not spot on.  I thought I hadn't sacrificed enough for this race.  Instead of training super hard like I did for Wales, I was sleeping in, and going out with Dave for beers, and baking cookies.  Everyone here was training so hard and booking their slot to Kona, and I was worried I would walk the marathon. 

As you might already know, I made it through the swim, I did not walk the marathon, and I gained an iron distance PR!  I learned so many lessons at this race, and I learned so much about me as an athlete.  This race was not one of those days where everything clicked.  It was far from that.  It was not the perfect race that you sometimes get when your fitness and the stars all align.

Instead, it was a day where I decided that I wasn't going to wait for the perfect race (or temp, or training block, or fitness).  I was going to make it good regardless. 

Not to mention, I had a blast.  What a frickin' awesome time with so many friends. 

Now I am sitting at home, sleepy and starving, thinking....did I just do another ironman?  It is a little surreal....  I swear if I had a chance I would do another one in a few weeks.

Race report on its way!