It's not always easy...

All week I've been going down memory lane reading Johan Stemmets blog while he's in Hawaii preparing for the Ironman. He's racing this weekend.

When he mentioned the Ironman parade I started going back through my pictures because I remember having one of me in the parade and I was going to post it. Then I came across this one.

For 21 years I've had a romance about my Hawaiian Ironman experience. It's unexplainable unless you do it. I don't have one bad memory of the Ironman until I looked at this picture. The picture shows me moments after I finished and I was on the massage table, I was so sore. I couldn't bend my knees. Heck, I couldn't even turn my neck to look at the camera. I willed myself across that finish line and it hurt. There was lots of walking to get there, but I did it. (Unfortunately I wasn't trained by Mark Allen at that time).

Funny thing was if I didn't have this picture, I would never have remembered how sore and exhausted I was. Looking at it also reminded me of how Alice had to help me with my bike and I shuffled very slowly back to the hotel, leaning on Alice with most of my weight the entire way. She said going up one hill she thought she was going to die I was so heavy.

When we finally did make it to the hotel, I went right to bed and slept like a rock. Alice was also an Ironman for getting me back. The funny thing was that this trip doubled for our honeymoon, we were married earlier that year. I guess in this case, Alice helped carry ME over the threshold.

For the past 21 years all I remember was doing it, not how I did it, or how I felt afterwards. That's the one thing about the Ironman, finishing is ALL that matters. I couldn't imagine having to live with myself for the last 21 years if I didn't complete that race.

Changing gears, it was a busy and intense day at work and will continue into the evening with a three hour plus sales conference call starting at 7 pm. The minute I got home I got on the bike for my speed bike workout in order to be finished before hand. My legs were sore from yesterday's speed run session. The kind of soreness that you really don't want to pound on them again, it's painful, but you know you have to in order to get stronger and faster. My average bike speed looked slow today, but it was deceiving because I did two very long and steep hills. For the non hills I was flying, sometimes up to 44 kph.

Bike Speed work - 1:20:56 / 37.39 km / 27.7 kph / 130 avg hr