Whew....

The first few days of this week have been tough. Sunday was a fun day, exhausting, but fun. We did our triathlon - an hour and 20 minutes at the highest heart rate I've trained at in a while. We usually go long and steady, this was a shorter event and we really pushed it the entire time. I felt that on Monday morning.

To make matters worse, Monday morning called for a 13 mile run. I did not want to go. But I did anyway and it was tough. The route was an out and back and it was all I could do to not turn around early. I fought for every step. I kept thinking "this is how the run in Ironman will feel". So I just kept going. Trevor was experiencing the same thing. It was hot and my heart rate monitor had died, so I had no idea what my heart rate was doing and I hate that. I finished up and was so glad to be done.

Then comes Tuesday....100 mile bike ride. Again, I did not want to go and kept trying to figure out how to get out of it. But I knew it had to be done. Ironman is about 5 weeks away. No more time to put things off.

We hit the road about 10 and were out there ALL DAY. It was hot, my legs were sore from Monday's run. It is so amazing how much your attitude can change on a long ride like this. One minute, I felt strong, the next I felt weak. Trevor was feel the same thing - the great thing was that he was up when I was down and vice versa. About mile 50 he told me that in the morning he had also been trying to figure a way to get out of doing this ride! Good thing we both kept that to ourselves.

It was a beautiful day. We rode down by the ride, flat and fast. Then up into Ridgefield - hilly and hot. We made a pitstop at home around mile 70 and it was so hard to get back on the bike. Our final 30 miles was back down by the river and it was WINDY. It was so bad that I felt like I wanted to cry. I was ready to be done....but we kept going.

Here we are at our final bathroom stop - 15 miles left to go. As our friend Trish says "smile when it hurts". I said to Trevor "take my picture so we have proof that I was still smiling at mile 85".



I was so happy to get home. I stopped my watch and let out a huge sigh of relief. Done.

We have two more 100 mile rides planned in the next two weeks and an 18 mile run. Then we'll taper down the last two weeks and then it will be time to head to Canada and get this thing over with. It is crazy to say that I can't wait? Don't answer that...