My buddies are beating me up about making a decision on IM Louisville, but I have a pretty big fish waiting to be fried on April 13th.
Signing up for New Orleans 70.3 feels like a good and bad decision. On one hand it has forced me to kick things into gear, on the other, it is very soon and I’m nowhere near ready. This will have to be the perfect storm, or I will just have to accept it as an early season training day that also happens to be a race that will forever shine an internet glow on a potentially awful time.
I’m not really a fan of bad times, though.
My thinking is, that if I’m gonna do this race, I might as well crush it. I mean, this is Crushing Iron after all. But it could easily be Crushed By Iron if I don’t get my ass in gear.
One mental road block is this damn swim course:
I mean, I don’t even know why it freaks me out so much, but it just looks like trouble. I can practically feel my body contorting on those hair pin turns and sighting seems like it may be tricky. But, really, sighting would be tricky for me if the landmark was a mountain.
Then I hear the real problem isn’t the swim course, it’s the wind. It looks protected, but I guess Lake Pontchartrain is pretty choppy. And the bike course can allegedly get very windy as well. Add that to the fact I’ll be in that retched aero position 80% of the time and my back is already tense.
I’m actually looking forward to the run. I did the 1/2 marathon in NOLA last year and it was pretty cool to run in and around the French Quarter. I’m planning to play one of my buddy’s favorite Bourbon Street games, “Homeless or Hammered?” while I run.
But really, that’s as funny as the pain I’ll likely be in by that point. How much of a base do I have from training all last year for an Ironman? Does it really “leave” or just take a while to access again? I’m waiting patiently, but NOLA is lurking.
Remember to put forth the efforts now, believe in your abilities, your training and your training plan…everything else will fall into place on race day. You will have an AWESOME race…I just know it 😉
It’s a tight squeeze at these turns, but I’m betting that we’ll feel it’s a much shorter distance since it’s broken into 3-3.5 segments! I’m looking forward to NOLA swim!
Good point. I’m hoping… if nothing else it will help us know how far we are for pacing… looking forward to it too!