Goals
(aka the wordy, introspective part that has little to do with the race itself; if you just want to know about the race, skip this part)I had a lot of people ask me how training for my second Ironman was different from training for my first, and I have a lot of different answers to that question.
On the one hand, I knew that I could do it. I could do the distances and cross the finish line; I had proven that. I was even really happy with my times from CdA. And I felt a lot of pressure because of that. My goal for CdA was to finish before they kicked me off the course, under 17 hours, and that's a fairly low-pressure goal (as long as you don't consider the enormity of the undertaking in general). But now coming in under 17 hours didn't seem good enough. It seemed like I should develop real goals, more firm time goals that I could push to achieve. And that caused a lot more anxiety.
But that also caused an interesting juxtaposition. On the one hand, I wanted to do better. On the other hand, I knew I could do it, and I knew that each missed workout didn't have to spell Ironman failure, so it made it easier to skip workouts with less stress, and to not always follow the schedule religiously, as I did for CdA.
So, overconfidence was at war with underconfidence about my ability to actually beat my only other Ironman time. I knew my running was much stronger this year, and I suspected my swimming was stronger, as well, AND I wasn't battling shoulder injury this year. On the other hand, an Ironman swim isn't like a normal swim, after you factor in the mass start. And being a stronger/faster runner doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a good run after a long bike ride where so many factors come into play. And then there was the bike.
The bike has long been my weakest sport. I love cycling, and I can ride for a long time/distance, but I haven't figured out how to get my speed up. I used to say the same about my running, and I know that concentrating solely on cycling speed, as I did with my running speed, would actually show good results, but I can't seem to get over being convinced that I'll never be any faster. So I was fearing the bike since the moment we decided to do Lake Placid and saw the elevation profile. I'm not a strong hill climber. Lake Placid is all about the hills. I had convinced myself at CdA that I had to maintain at least 14mph or I would be disappointed in myself, and I cut it SO close (14.1 mph), and I REALLY wanted to do better at Lake Placid, but resigned myself, given the hills, to probably doing worse. I apologize to anyone who had to listen to me badmouth my cycling/hill-climbing abilities in the months leading up to Lake Placid. I know I was whining and bitching a lot. But it was the one part I was truly dreading and convinced would be my downfall.
But this is supposed to be about my goals. So I decided that my primary goal, so as not to set my hopes too high, was to go faster on the bike. I wanted to average at least 14.2 mph on the bike. Given how different the course was, I didn't think I would do it. But I wanted to have some semblence of confidence in myself. So if my swim and run were the same speeds as at CdA, but my bike slightly faster, I would be completely satisfied with my race.
That was my primary goal. I had others, of course. I had already achieved my goal of losing weight so that I wouldn't be so unhappy with my weight/my race photographs this time, and racing 20 pounds lighter was bound to help with my running, too. I was going to try to go at least a few minutes faster in every discipline if I could.. my swimming had been picking up speed near the end of my training, thanks to swimming with Courtney, and my running had picked up significant speed after a marathon season with Karen and the Texas Iron Tuesday night workouts. And hopefully I could not be so braindead in T1 and T2, and actually transition a little more efficiently.
So, try to push the bike faster than last year, but not so much that I couldn't have a good run. I was so looking forward to the run, as I'd really felt at CdA that that's where the event came together and really felt like an epic journey. I didn't want my epic journey to be 26.2 miles of muscle cramps and vomiting, if I could help it.
Underneath it all, of course, is the goal of just crossing the finish line. That is not at all a foregone conclusion, and anything can happen. And crossing the finish line faster than I had at CdA was another goal. Sub-14:51:41.
All those goals were swimming around in my head in the months leading up to the event, and especially in the days before. I tried to push it all aside, though, so stress dreams wouldn't keep me from resting. I think I actually said to Matt on our drive up to Lake Placid, "I guess I should be concerned about that Ironman thing at some point, huh?"
And to make matters worse, one week before Lake Placid, I came down with a horrible cold-like thing with congestion and coughing and sneezing and a fever. I reassessed my many months of goals at that point and whittled it down to "finish". Fortunately my fever broke Tuesday, my congestion was mostly clear by Thursday, and I felt pretty normal by Saturday. Go, immune system!
I didn't intend this section to be so rambly, I apologize. But it gives you some idea of how big I'd built this up in my mind.. how I was secretly convinced of failure ahead of time. Fortunately, one thing I always pride myself on is no matter how convinced I am that I can't do something, it never, ever stops me from trying my hardest to prove myself wrong. And Sunday morning, I was prepared to prove something to myself.
