Mentally, my toughest day...

Last night Alice and I hung out on the deck and had cocktails. Jamie and his wife Barbara stopped in and had a couple of beers. At final count I had 21 beers, it was a major carbo loading night. When I woke up at 10 am I didn't feel 100%. It never fails, last night I felt great and didn't want the party to end. This morning I'm paying the price. I knew I had a lot to drink because I fell asleep on the top of the bed and not under the covers, plus I couldn't find my glasses.

By the time I got the "cob webs" out and got ready to go for my 7 hour long bike ride, it was noon. Just as I got on the bike I realized that one of my aero bars was broken, at the seam it came a part. I called the bike store and they suggested I come by and have them look at it.

The first part of my ride was going through the city streets to get to the bike store. The traffic was terrible and it was dangerous riding. When I got to the store, Jeff looked at it and said it was okay to ride on, but was defective and needs to be replaced. It seemed like the first 90 minutes of the ride took forever. It felt like I'd been riding for 3 hours and it was only 90 minutes. My head was still a little foggy from last night and truth be told, I didn't really want to do this ride. Every pedal stroke was hell.

Just before I left home, by chance, I picked up a magazine with an article by Mark Allen talking about mental toughness and that some of the greatest breakthroughs come in training when you just don't think you can finish. He said these episodes are great to help build confidence and get you through the Ironman. He says during an Ironman you can think back to those difficult days and use them as motivation and inspiration, knowing that if you finished that difficult training session, you can finish the race.

Today training was mentally draining. For the first 4 hours I just couldn't stop thinking about how much training I've been doing and that I'm sick of it. I kept questioning "why am I doing this". Then I started to get so mad because of the injury to my calf and not knowing if I'd be able to run on it. I was also worried that if I couldn't train on it, could I finish the Ironman below my goal time or even comfortably or even at all? I was also just thinking that all the training I've done could go down the drain if I can't finish these last 3 critical weeks of workouts. I just imagined myself walking for the entire marathon. I was just so "pissed off".

I was also telling myself I just want to finish this season. By September 14th, I'll be done for the year. Then I can pare back the training and let my body heal. But, again, I was getting really depressed about my calf and not knowing if I'll be able to do any long runs on it. I was also "pissed off" that I didn't do a long run last week, which was suppossed to be 3 hours, because I wanted to rest my knee. Now it looked like I wasn't going to do this weeks long run, which means I will not have run long in two weeks. Not good. The long runs are critical physically and mentally.

At the 4 hour mark, I was thinking about calling Alice to pick me up. Then I thought about cutting the ride short and if I headed home from where I was it would be a 5 1/2 - 6 hour ride. I can't say enough how mentally challenging this ride was. I was even getting sick of the route I was riding because I've ridden it so much. At times there was drizzly rain, then sun, then shade and I wasn't dressed well for when it would get cooler. I was just having a tough ride. I just kept taking it 15 minutes at a time and when I did look at my watch, it looked like time was standing still.

At the 5 1/2 hour point things started to turn around. I started to mentally feel better and my legs actually started to get stronger. I was riding faster and it was weird, I actually felt like I just started the ride and was not 5 1/2 hours into the ride. I just started to feel fresh and at that point I knew I was going to finish this 7 hour ride. I knew it was not going to be less than 7 hours. I ended up finishing in 7 hours and 2 minutes and averaged 29.7 kph and riding 208 km or 129 miles. And the best part was that I had no muscle fatigue when I finished. It was the easiest long ride I've done this year. Mentally the ride was extremely, and I mean extremely challenging, but physically it was a piece of cake. I was scheduled to do a 30 minute brick run right afterwards, but decided not to as my calf was still pretty sore.

After my stretching and shower, Alice and I headed out to Emma's Back Porch and had dinner and drinks. I was starting to get a little tired, but after a couple beers, they helped bring my energy back. At Emma's, John called me to see if we were running tomorrow and I told him I didn't think I could because of my calf. I said I was going to try to run, but it might only be 15 minutes, he suggested he come anyway and he'll run with me until I can't, then he'll keep going to finish a 2:40 minute run. I agreed and told him I'd see him tomorrow at 9 am.