Countdown to Ironman, Week 42: The Emotional Rollercoaster

If it was easy, they wouldn't call it the Ironman, right? Every Ironman journey is fraught with doubts and excitement, emotional highs and lows. I have to admit that in the last six miles of my trail marathon, it was the doubts that were winning out. My thoughts went something like "If I'm bonking and choking in the middle of this little run, how am I going to handle doing this AFTER biking and swimming all that ways?

Of course, the answer is equally simple: I'm going to train more. Comparing a performance when I've only been training 20 miles a week of running and very little biking is not the same as what I'm capable of when I'm training twice that or more. It's easy to forget that if we build up gradually, our bodies are capable of ever-increasing feats of endurance. When I started training for my first Ironman after having kids, I could hardly run a mile. The fact that I just ran twenty-four of them on a hot, rocky, high-altitude, hilly trail should be comforting me, not demoralizing me!

So here I am, forty-two weeks away from Ironman Coeur d'Alene (well, 41.3 if you're being picky) and I'm officially going to tell myself that I can do this. Of course, this will only be the first of many times that I'll need to do this. After all, if it was going to be easy, they wouldn't call it the Ironman.