3 months and 30 days

Whew! It's been a long and really great week, and you're probably tired of the frequent long detailed posts 'just' about training, but.....well.....ok, I won't apologize, this is my race blog after all, this is the place I can go gab about all this tri stuff and not have eyes rolled at me *cough cough husband* :)

We're home now, but this morning in an attempt to make time for my hubby to run, I started mine at 5:00am. It was chilly on the face and hands, but a really neat run. It was totally dark the whole time with an almost full moon to light my way and no street lights for most of my run, so I didn't have as much time to get distracted by the awesome scenery. Seriously, I fall in love with the beauty of this course more and more every time I'm on it. The red rock against the blue sky? Just awesome!!! Anyway, back to the run.
Today was just an easier long run. I wanted to feel what 9:00 mile pace avg felt like both out and back on the course so I set the limits on the Garmin and off I went. There are 3 good climbs to the turnaround and more like 2 on the way back. I know that doesn't make sense logistically, but that's how it feels. A couple of them are really mean too! Like close to a mile long and a really good grade. One particular hill was hard to maintain under 10:00 mile pace going up without totally working hard. I see more hill work in my future! :)
In an attempt to get home in time for said hubby to get out and run I had to cut my run down to 11 miles, but that's ok. I got the feel for the course both out and back like I needed. While I've obviously put a ton of physical work in this week, so much of what I've done over the last 6 days has been mental. The mind is such a powerful tool. The body could be 100% perfectly trained for some endeavour, but if the mentality is not there, it just won't happen like it could. And while I'm still an Ironman virgin I have a feeling it's even more true for that 140.6 mile experience.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be down there. So grateful for a body capable to do what I want it to and to be trained. So much gratitude for my husband for allowing me the time to indulge in this and taking great care of the kids while I'm gone. So grateful for God's beauty and His goodness. I think I'm kind of on a high right now and I hope I can extend it out into my normal life now. So much hard work, so many sore muscles, such a great week.

Check out these cool pics. St George is so excited to host IRONMAN. These little tri guys were the theme of their First Night celebration this year. If you have the chance to come down for the race, I can promise it'll be one of the coolest most motivating things to see ever.