ironman bipolar

Swim - 2.5 miles, 1:17 - ironman course swim with 4 x 0.6 miles @ race pace on 30 sec recovery

One day I feel like I am not prepared for Ironman, and the next day I feel like I have things in the bag. Ironman bipolar. Today's swim was reassuring. I swam the course at a hard but sustainable pace and took three 30 second rest intervals. Including the rest and going completely off course at the end, I still came in just above my target race time. I now feel confident that I will have no trouble going under 1:15 on race day. Whew! I know I shouldn't split hairs over my swim time since a few minutes is insignificant over the course of a 13 hour race, but I feel like I am on a personal mission to achieve my swim goal regardless of how little the time matters to the rest of the race. After the swim I striped off my wetsuit and ran up the spiral of the Monona Terrace barefoot in my swimsuit as though it were the race. Then I got yelled at by a parking attendant who thought I should not be doing that. She had no idea what Ironman is when I told her what I was doing, and no sympathy whatsoever.

Lots of iron people were out swimming the course this morning. Many of them also had their bikes in their cars in order to do a post-swim ride on the course. I like this sense of community. It gets a little intense knowing that all these people are probably just as stressed out as me with ironman bipolar as they are getting in their final brick workouts this weekend.

I had a personal issue come up after my workout due to a very odd coincidence of two people who happened to be standing on the shore at the same exact moment. I don't usually share these sorts of details on this blog, but suffice it to say that dealing with these things amidst my training is what I consider my fourth discipline of triathlon.