Shall we continue with the countdown?

It is starting to get real up in here! I kind of want to do a post counting down EVERY SINGLE DAY between now and October 29th but I will save you the agony. Last week when there were 3 weeks to go it still seemed far enough in the distance to be “that thing I am doing at the end of the month”, you know, weeeeeeeks from now. Now, we are two weeks away from packing up the car with my gear and hitting the road. Even typing that sentence made my heart rate go up a few beats.

My peak training was last weekend so ready or not, I am headed to Wilmington in two weeks. I am officially into the taper at this point. Hooray!

I have been soaking up information in race reports like a sponge and making lists of things I need to bring or do or just think about doing. I have all sorts of lists. My lists even have lists. At this point, the list for the various transition and special needs bags looks like I am packing enough for a three day weekend as opposed to a 5 minute change of clothes or brief stop along the course to refuel. I am pretty sure I need to apply some tough love to the list and trim it back a bit.

When it started getting chilly last week, it occurred to me that I need to decide what I am going to wear. This sort of makes me laugh - it sounds like such a girly thing to say – ‘whatever shall I wear’. With sprint, Olympic and even half-irons, the decision is pretty easy; you wear the same thing from beginning to end. In iron distance races, typically there is a changing tent and people can change clothes at each transition. I have to say, it might be nice to start out a 112 mile bike ride in dry clothes. I still haven’t fully decided what I am going to do there; I am leaning towards changing just to be more comfortable. I am not trying to win any awards so am not all that concerned about the extra time. Well, except for that dream I had…. I dreamt I crossed the finish line in 13:23:23. I can’t remember any other details of the dream, only the time. Weird. I feel as though I need to put it out there. That way if that *is* the actual time I finish, I can start my business as a psychic. I can set up a booth at race expos and predict finish times. You would pay for that, right? ;)

In other news, CR didn’t seem too interested in the cowbell I bought for him. He will warm up to the idea of it. I told him everyone on the race course loves to hear a good cowbell. He seemed unconvinced. In all fairness, he does enjoy watching the shorter races so am sure he will get into it and be ringing that cowbell like a madman before it is over. I mean, he really only needs to ring it for 13 hours 23 minutes and 23 seconds, that is not too much to ask...

TWO WEEKS!