Getting down to the wire...

My gut is going away and don't want it to return. No snacking, equals no gut, even when drinking lots of beer. I love it. This morning I stepped on the scale and it was 184.8 lbs. It feels like old times when anything over 183 was heavy. 

This morning my legs were stiff, I'm glad I only had a swim scheduled. The tough part is it's a swim, it's easier for me to motivate myself to do a 4-hour ride than a 1-hour swim. I would have liked to have swam this morning but couldn't, I had budget numbers I needed to prepare for an Online Yearbook Business Plan. I haven't done much, the other guys have been doing the heavy lifting and now the light was on me, I needed to give the guys my yearbook knowledge and brilliance so they could continue with the proforma.

All weekend I was thinking of doing it and kept putting it off. However, I didn't stop thinking about it and as the training unfolded so too did my strategy. In the process of training, I thought of my approach, I visualized the best way to do it and when I sat down to do it today, I did about 7-hours of work in about 2.5 hours. It did help that I could steal some of the format from my Pro book Business Plan. 

I finished 25 minutes before a phone conference call and emailed the numbers to the other guys. I'm sure when they see it they are going to think I worked over the weekend on it. The reality is as a president of a yearbook company I bought three years ago I know the business and the numbers come naturally to me. Even though I got them the numbers this is a delicate situation, I've already signed with AG and it's only a matter of time until I have to tell the other guys I'm out. Or do I. The other option is to raise the money and act as a consultant. Essentially do very little and make some money and negotiate some free stock. We'll see, time will tell. 

After my conference call I got some tax stuff done and tied up loose ends, I got a lot done. I was even looking for more to do, I didn't want to go to the pool. In fact, I can't believe I did. It was a LOT of self-talk. The main argument that won was "you don't have a lot of time left, 10-days, you HAVE to do this, not doing it is NOT an option". I couldn't afford to lose this game of chicken. 

I'm glad I did it, from the first 100 meters my shoulder was sore. I've never had that before, it felt kind of like a cold shoulder. I could still swim through it, it was a 2 on 10 on the pain scale and it was reaffirmation that I NEEDED this swim. I had hopes to do 5500 meters and did 3000. I realized that my first swim in at least 2-weeks needs to be a little shorter. I can still do the long one after I give myself some shorter warm up ones. 

Just as I was finishing John Fortin and Hugh came into the pool area. We had a good talk. I saw John a couple of weeks ago, he seemed to be in better spirits today. He told me he has a few sales opportunities that came up, he was laid off recently. Last year John had it made, as I did, he was laid off and given a large enough severance to carry him for the summer as he trained for Ironman Wisconsin, his first Ironman. As I was leaving the pool area I was watching John swim, his stroke looks awesome. It's amazing that he didn't know how to swim last year when I met him. He now looks like he's been swimming for years.

My swim was as I expected....SLOW. I probably averaged 1:52's for most of my 600 meter intervals. I'm sure by the time I leave to St. George on Wednesday it will be down to 1:45's and I'll be happy with that. My biggest concern is to work out the sore shoulder or any kinks and get my calfs used to kicking and not cramping. Last year at IMSG I almost had a full blown calf cramp, the water is so cold and I didn't put in a lot of hours in the pool before last years race. As I've said before, the extra time in the pool will MAYBE shave 3-5 minutes off my time, a fast transition can eat up half of that. 

Last year my transition was 8:20, my slowest ever. It was so damn cold, I was there to finish and get my confidence back after Ironman China and I didn't care. I was more concerned about putting on arm warmers and drying my feet and all that. The transition should have been about 4 minutes. This year so long as it's not unusually cold, I should be able to improve my transition time and eat up the slower swim time. 

I took a look at my last years IMSG times, I need to remember them to compare as I race. 

Swim - 1:12:25

Bike - 5:55:12

Run - 4:06:54

Total - 11:26:07

T1 - 8:20

T2 - 3:08

When I looked at the times I was surprised to see the run was as fast as it was, all I remember was spending at least 20 minutes of total time in the porta potties. Maybe longer. On this course anything under 11 hours is amazing. I noticed that the race has still not sold out, I think it's the only one on the Ironman circuit that has not sold out. People are scared of it, with good cause, it's a wicked tough course, lots of hills, 4000 ft over sea level, can be winds up to 100 kph, could be super hot, could be super cold. The strategy is to ride the first loop easier than the second and save it for the run which is mostly good sized hills. I can only say, if it's hot, there is going to be more people drop out of this race than any other Ironman race. It will be brutal. 

After the swim I spend 15 minutes in the steam room and another 15 minutes in the hot tub. I wanted to stress my body with heat in anticipation of hot weather AND I wasted to warm up the muscles and improve the blood flow in my legs. I wore compression tights all day and the heat was another recovery move. It took me another 20 minutes to stop sweating before I could even put my clothes on, I just sat on a bench beside my locker with a towel around my waist and couldn't stop sweating. Mission accomplished. 

Next stop was home and leftovers from last night and a snooze on the couch before waking up at 8 pm and going to the sun tan studio. I think I've left it too late and probably should have started the tanning a week or two earlier. I don't want to burn in St. George. I was looking at last years post race video and it looked like I burnt from the sun, my face was a mess. 

The plan for the next week is to do some tempo and speed work for about half of my sessions, carefully. I don't want to over stress and injure myself, I just need to get them used to the added stress and lactic acid build up.

Swim - 1:05:12 / 3000

184.8 lbs