6 sleeps to go!!!!

The last few weeks of rest were mentally hard as I was constantly tired but I know from previous years, once I got going again everything would be okay.  The Vet’s time trial on Wednesday was cancelled due to bad weather so I had to wait until Thursday to start training.  With the wind blowing a gale I could have easily stayed home Thursday night but thought I’d test my theory that I’d feel better after having done some exercise.  I had a fantastic ride through the valley and back again, almost clocking P.Bs both ways. 

The rest of the week was spent thinking about my race plan or strategies to deal with the day.

In 'Going Long' (Friel & Byrn, 2003) they say

"Ironman is a test of how much patience you are prepared to exercise" and quote Cameron Brown, the Ironman marathon is "Twenty miles of hope and six mile of reality" and say the race doesn't start until the 30km marker on the run.

Some of the analogies I know:

It’s better to be 10% undertrained than 1% over trained.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time and that’s the key to Ironman, one stroke / one revolution / one step at a time.

Don’t burn all your matches at once.  Matches = efforts and you can only put in so many efforts.  The smart athlete will save most of their matches for the later part of the day.

The trick to having a good race is to think of your energy as a full tank of gas, you want to get as far as possible as economically as possible.

Today, Andy and I biked down to Lower Hutt to get our bikes and helmets checked.  It's great to be this organised, hope the rest of the week goes to plan.