We arrived just in time for the Endurance Nation Four Keys talk. I've been getting Endurance Nation emails for about 2 years and Rich and Patrick have great long course racing advice.
Brief Four Keys Summary:
1. Execution, not Fitness. Of course you have to have some level of fitness to complete an Ironman. But even the fittest athlete can blow up his race if he doesn't execute it well. And someone like me, who is not the fittest athlete, can have a solid race with proper execution.
2. The Line. If you execute your race properly, it should not get enomously difficult until mile 18 on the run. Everything you do before that should be setting yourself up to keep going and not slow down at mile 18. That means not cooking the bike, not starting the run too fast, staying on top of nutrition.
3. The Box. As long as you can during the race, stay in your box of things you can control. When you are swimming, focus on swimming and not what's coming up next. On the bike, think about the bike and how much power you are pushing versus how much power you should be pushing. Everything you do should be setting yourself up to get to The Line.
4. The One Thing. When things get hard (hopefully not before mile 18), make sure you have rehearsed in your mind telling your body why you are making it do this.
I had watched the Four Keys video before and had read about it, but it was great to hear it all again right before the race.
After the talk, we went to athlete check in. Since I had done Boise, I was familiar with how Ironman ran their check in process, ie as complicated as possible. We followed a maze all over the convention center showing our ID, getting weighed (I guess if a medical personal pulls you off the course during the race, they can weigh you to see if you have lost too much weight due to dehydration), and finally picking up our race packets. I think the whole process took about half an hour, we heard later that it was taking over 2 hours. At least it was all inside and out of the sun.
Next, I convinced everyone to join me at Chipotle for lunch. Today was supposed to be my big eating day, eat as much as possible to store up some calories for Sunday. So I had a burrito AND a Sprite.
After lunch we hooked up with Loretta, a teammate of Dan's who lives in Chicago. She had ridden the bike course several times this summer and volunteered to drive the course with us. We drove the loop once and it was great to finally see it in person. No part of the course was flat for very long, but the hills didn't seem that long or steep. There were a lot of sharp turns, some of which immediately turned into a steep uphill or downhill. I could not believe how many cyclists wearing race bracelets were out there riding the course. Even riding out and back to Verona would be over 30 miles. I wanted to shout out the window, "What the hell are you doing?" but everyone in the car vetoed me.
We got back in town around 4:00 and I got dropped back off at Granny Shirley's house. My family arrived a little bit later after their 2 day drive with my bike. I ate dinner with everyone, then headed back over to the convention center for the Mandatory Athlete's Meeting at 7:30. The meeting was as I expected, a lot of explanation of drafting penalties and a high emphasis of no public nudity, urination or defecation. Though I do think that if you are publicly defecating, you probably didn't have a whole lot of say in the matter.
That night, I stayed over at cousin Sally's house to ensure that I got a good night sleep (aka did not get awakened by my kids at 6 in the morning). I have only met Sally a handful of times, but we had a nice chat about my race and the family before I went to bed around 10:30. And I did get another wonderful night's sleep, probably thanks to Advil PM.
I woke up around 7:30 on Saturday to the sound of rain. Jeremy and Dad came and picked me up and we stopped at Starbucks on the way back to Granny's. I tried the toffee mocha and I give it two thumbs up. It lightly rained until about 9:00. Around 10:00 I rode my bike for just 15 minutes to make sure everything was still working correctly, then I ran 10 minutes, mostly so I would be warmed up to stretch afterward.
Next I had the very important task of packing all my transition bags. There were 5 bags total:
1. Morning bag - a bag to take with me to the race that I could put all my clothes and whatever else I was still hanging onto before starting the swim.
2. Swim to bike bag - a bag to put all my bike gear in, including helmet and shoes.
3. Special needs bike bag - a bag I could get half way through the bike loop. I put a spare tube, 3 water bottles of Infinite nutrition, a snickers bar and a small can of pringles.
4. Bike to run bag - for all my running gear
5. Special needs running bag - I put in a long sleeved shirt, extra socks, advil and gel.
Here's all my gear pre-bagging:
Around noon, Jeremy and I went back down to the convention center to drop off my swim-to-bike bag, bike-to-run bag and bike.
All the bags went into a room in numerical order:
Our bikes had to checked in Saturday and they were racked outside. I covered my seat and computer with plastic bags on the very slight chance it might rain again:
We got home around 1:00 and had lunch with my Granny's cousin from Chicago. Then Jeremy and Dad took the boys to miniature golf while I stayed back and relaxed. I would not have found putt putt relaxing.
At 4:00 Dad and Granny drove to Milwaukee to pick up Ariel from the airport and my family was left to fend for itself. I convinced everyone to go back to Chipotle for dinner, despite Adam's protests. After dinner, we had a scavenger hunt to find Mix 1 (Whole Foods) and a Snickers bar and Pringles (Walgreens). Then Jeremy dropped me off at the Double Tree hotel to spend the night with Alison. We had decided that it would be too hard to get the family up and going as early as I needed to be going and Al's hotel was only a mile from the start.
Al and I had a quiet evening. We watched Knight and Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. At 10:15 I set both my watch alarm and cell phone alarm to go off at 4:15. It shocked me when my cell phone read, "Alarm to go off in 6 hours." What? 6 hours? That's not enough sleep time! Little did I know, I would not be getting anywhere near 6 hours of sleep. In fact, I lay on that comfy bed wide awake for hours. I made myself not look at the clock, even when I got up to pee twice. Finally I checked, it was already 12:30. I rested some more, and at 2:00 I took the Endurance Nation coaches' advice and had my big breakfast. I wasn't too excited about eating, so I drank 2 Mix 1's, about 400 calories. Then I lay there some more, occasionally burping Mix 1. I know I saw 2:33 on the clock, I think I finally drifted off for a bit around 3:00, and was awake before the alarm went off.
Both alarms did go off on time, then it was time to get ready!
I ate my peanut butter sandwich and drank Gatorade while I mixed up my 6 bottles of Infinite. I also had a cup of crappy hotel coffee. Al, Dan and I had the inglorious idea of taking a cab down to the race start and it was waiting for us at 5:15. Definitely the best $5 Dan ever spent.
Here we are outside the capital:
When I get back to here, I will be an Ironman!
We got down to the race start and were able to go to our bikes to put our water bottles on and check our tires, and get into our transition bags for the few things we had forgotten or wanted to check. We got body marked (when the guy asked my age, I said 31? How out of it was I??? 34 might be excusable, but 31???), then hung out in the convention center waiting for the race to start.
And now, boys, please feel free to skip this part. Just go to the next entry, there's nothing but gross girl talk left here.
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Warning - gross girl talk ahead -
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So at my last bathroom break at 6:30, I discovered that I had started my period. This was something I had been worrying about (along with 57 other things I couldn't control such as but not limited to the weather, mass swim starts and forest fires in Boulder) and I was prepared but not happy. I complained to Al and she reminded me there was nothing I could do about it and to put it out of my head. And so I did, though I did shake my fist at my stupid body and its ridiculously short 22 day cycle.
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