And etcetera

I've always maintained that the most difficult part of the Ironman is not the hours of training, but rather signing up a year in advance, in essence saying, "Yes, in one year from today I will be healthy, fit and ready." A lot can happen in a year. A lot can happen in two weeks.

On Sunday Alex started complaining of a stomach ache. He wasn't having any other stomach bug symptoms and the pain started to get worse. Eventually I decided to take him to urgent care to rule out appendicitis. After numerous test including a strep culture (because apparently sometimes strep presents as a stomach ache in kids) and a blood draw, we were sent home with the diagnosis of "tummy bug." But a day later we got a call back that while the instant strep culture came back negative, the 24 hour one was positive. Alex missed 2 days of school but after a day on the antibiotic was feeling back to normal. So now my main goal is to also not get strep. In fact, as a precaution I got a strep test myself yesterday, though the doctor rolled her eyes and assured me that since I wasn't actually sick and my throat looked fine, I was probably good.

So with 11 days left, things are looking good. I did my training. I have a race plan. I appear to be healthy and uninjured. I need to stop worrying about the weather, that is out of my control. I have three more training days left that have volume in the 90 minutes to 2 1/2 hour range and then it's easy taper time.