The Bike Course

One of the dumbest things you can do in training for an Ironman is to predict something. Predict your time to finish, predict if you are going to finish faster than a friend, predict whatever, it is wrong to try to predict something you have no control over. You might show up and have tummy ache. Or a blown ACL. I can't predict my workout tomorrow, other than it is going to hurt right up until I get to Starbucks for a mocha with extra whip cream and chocolate and caramel drooled over the top. I can put two of those bad boys down. Easy. So, lesson number one, you can predict Starbucks drink consumption with near certainty, but predicting IM finish times is just something you can't do.

Unfortunately, due to a predisposition to idiocy on my part, which I blame on my bad fraternal genetics, I spend most of my waking hours thinking of the upcoming IM event. When I am at work, gazing at the wall, looking like I am thinking of something brilliant, I am actually calculating how long it will take me to finish the swim, based on my hundred yard swim time. I calculate my bike time based on my average pace. I calculate my run time based on hopeful fantasy. I add those together, throw in some impossibly fast transition time, ending up with a really fast IM. If only life were so simple.

So my training partner Duane drives over to Coeur d'Alene and rides one loop of the bike course. The bike is a two loop thing, mostly out and back on highway 95. Duane rode it once. He said it is freakishly hard. It is all hills. That sucks. It blows my prediction out of the water. I need to spend another full day at work calculating a new finish time.

I swam this morning. John and Jim and I did sprints for 30 minutes in the pool, next to some gal who is sixty pounds overweight, but still a better swimmer than I am. I hate her. She was such an arrogant swimmer. Swimming and swimming, faster than me, back and forth, up and down the pool. Fast. I bet her whole family hates her. I know I do. If I see her swimming again, I am going to pee in the pool and get out.

After the swim we biked for a couple hours out to Enumclaw and back. We stopped at Starbucks and had a grande mocha with extra whip cream and chocolate and caramel drool on the top. And a banana. And a hot ham and egg sandwich.

My coundown counter says 91 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes. I have that long to train. It isn't enough. I need another year. Another year to drop 15 pounds.

Oh ya, one more thing. A follower of this blog noted that I sound whiney. Whiney. Get that. Me. Whiney. I might, I admit, from time to time, rarely, maybe digress to some lower form of author that would engender reader mirth through lamentation, choosing that easy, more heavily trodden road over the higher, less traveled sanguine road, the self-actualization thing like Tony Freakin Robbins. I don't like him. I looked up some Tony Freakin Robbins quotes. Seriously, he actually said this shit.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.
Tony Robbins

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
Tony Robbins

For changes to be of any true value, they've got to be lasting and consistent.
Tony Robbins

How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?
Tony Robbins

So crap. I can't be whiney. Fine. I will not do that. I will try to be upbeat and positive always. You have my promise. Just like Tony Freakin Robbins. Except for now, my knee hurts and I am hungry and I need to lose 15 pounds before my IM and I am tired and I want meat and ice cream which I can't have I can eat carrots and peas. And it seriously pisses me off that Tony Freakin Robbins is smarter than me, a better author than me, better at everything. I hate him and the gal in the pool.