Under a month

One month from now, I will be an Ironman. It’s real now. It’s not some ambiguous thing that is months away, I fly to Florida in 25 days. DAYS. And I have no idea what I’m doing! I feel like there are a million and one things I need to get done, but what are they? I need to start making a list of things as they pop into my head, like I did before the wedding. I need to get my bike tuned up. I need to buy spare tubes and Co2 cartridges. I need to buy a seat mounted bottle holder. I need to figure out what the heck I’m going to put in my special needs bags. I need to figure out whether or not my TA bag will be too big to carry on the plane once it’s stuffed to the brink. And I don’t know what else I need to do, but I know there is some stuff.

Most of the time I feel pretty calm and excited about the race. But some days, I just completely lose it and freak out. For anyone who has had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of one of my freak outs, I apologize! I really am NOT a spaz, for the most part I’m totally normal and level headed. I promise!

In 29 days I will be done. It will be over and I can resume a normal life. Not that the past few months have been horrible or anything, but I’ve been pretty much consumed by Ironman. I don’t even know how many events and activities I’ve had to turn down because of this. Sorry, can’t go out tonight, I have to go for a ride. Sorry, can’t go out, I have to get up early tomorrow morning to run. That has been my life for months. And to be honest, I haven’t really minded all that much. But for some reason, NOW it is getting hard. I had to turn down happy hour last night so I could ride my bike. And I can’t go to the American Royal with Dan tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow to run. Dammit! I’m tempted to go, but I would wind up drinking a few beers and eating a lot of BBQ, and then I would feel like ass tomorrow. So I will be at home by myself hanging out with the dogs, catching up on the shows I DVR’d this week.

I’ve been busting my ass for the last 5 months training for this. Well, longer than that, since I trained for the marathon in May and built up a nice solid foundation. I’m constantly tired, and something is always hurting. If it’s not my back, its my legs. If it’s not my legs, its my toes. If it’s not my toes, it’s my shoulders. And sometimes its everything. But soon it will all be worth it, and I have a feeling that all the aches and pains and missed fun activities will make it that much sweeter.

I’ve got three friends signed up for Ironman races next year. Erin is doing Arizona in April, Dawn is doing Coeur d’Alene in June, and Robyn is doing Louisville in August (I just realized how nice and evenly spaced all those are). I want to shake them all and say “Do you know what you have done?!?!!? Do you realize you have a freakin IRONMAN coming up in X number of months!?!?!?”, and then spew all of my acquired knowledge all over them. But like I said earlier, I really don’t know what I’m doing either. I do feel like I’ve learned quite a bit just through my own trial and error over the last year, but I know they’ll all probably do a better job at figuring it all out than I have. I’m excited to get my race over with and then be able to cheer them on, but I know I’ll be a little jealous of them at the same time! But then again, I’ll be kicking back with an adult beverage or two while they are forced to say “sorry, can’t go out, I have to get up early to run” :)