Ahhh, now I get it….

So I am figuring out the rationale behind this 9 month training program – If you exercise tired for 9 months, you will think you have died and gone to heaven if you only have exercise tired for up to 17 hours! Maybe you all figured that out awhile ago but I just did this morning! Okay I am slow but also tired!

Yesterday was a challenge in more ways than one. We started the day with a good swim and then we had that dreaded evening run! I have the utmost respect for you people that can find the energy to exercise after work or in the evening! Wow my hat is off to you! I am not one of those people! I like to get out of bed, get the exercise done early and behind me. Well, yesterday was one of our “agony sandwiches” – up early to swim and then right to the treadmill after work with a long day of work in the middle! ICK! Anyway the run was good. I was able to warmup and then run most of the 30 minutes at a 9:15 min/mi pace and then the last 5 minutes I increased the pace one treadmill notch each minute ending with a 8:27 min/mi pace and still feeling strong and no stitch! Then we did our kettlebell and core workout with the entire team. The entire team includes a few smart folks that didn’t sign up for Ironman – Dave, Libby, Andy and Nancy. Fun to have a few bright, shiny, different faces to chat with while you are exercising tired! So I got all the workouts done and came home to a less than warm house! Nice! After a bit of troubleshooting and a call to my friendly furnace company, my house temp went from 54 – 65 when I crawled into bed around 10pm!!! Yikers! I had to be up at 4:20am to bike.

So finally to the point of my whole post!!! Angie and I both got on our bikes this morning starting our 1 hr 15 min spin and said at the same time “Wow my legs are really fatigued!” At that point you wonder, how am I going to pedal for over an hour???? Well we did it, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t pretty and it certainly wasn’t fast but we got there! I guess this is probably the biggest part of the Ironman training – training the brain! No wonder it takes 9 months!