Looooong Run

Today was my last big session before Busselton, one last looooong run. It went only okay. That is okay in the 'only okay, but not great' sense, rather than the 'everything went okay meaning it went fine' sense.

The first two thirds of the run went okay, I was holding target pace etc, but then I really fell in a deep deep hole. A deep enough hole that I was mentally assessing most people I went past as to the likelihood of them lending me their phone so that I could call my wife to come and get me. You know it isn't going great when you are still a decent training run away from home and you have hit the wall. The last third of that run was all damage control.


I pushed through though and did manage to get home under my own steam. It wasn't pretty and it certainly wasn't fast, but it was complete. The decision to finish the run was really based on one thing. An Ironman is a very long way, chances are the run is going to be painful, things may go very wrong. If something goes very wrong I thought it would be good to know that I can still get to the line. If the question is asked, rather than my answer being 'well last time I stopped' I wanted to know I could do it. That is why I pushed through. Stuffed now though.

If I am perfectly honest I would have much preferred my last big session before Busselton to be awesome, a massive confidence boost. When this session started going south, one of my first thoughts was 'Oh no, not two weeks out'. But to be honest I am not all that phased. As I said I would have preferred for the session to go well, but I also know that one bad session doesn't negate all the work I have done. A very demanding session at the end of a very demanding week didn't go entirely to plan. I am not going to lose sleep over that. I had a great day on the bike yesterday and a good one in the pool the day before that. I know that on the whole I am travelling pretty okay. Okay enough for me to say that I am confident that Ironman will go well? No way, I think I would be crazy to say that. There are just simply too many unknowns for me at the moment. But okay enough for me to be comfortable that for now, there is not much more that I can do.

Rest day tomorrow, complete with sleep in. Do you know how long it has been since I last went to bed without setting an alarm for sometime between 4:00am and 5:00am? Me neither.