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Ironhigh

Intoxicating. That's the only way to describe the whole Ironman experience.

Not just the race itself, but the training and the mental wind-up. Arriving at work having already finished a 3-hour workout and logging a 22-hour training week are intoxicating. Same with feeling good enough to put in a decent run after a 110-mile bike ride.

The past week has been a scheduled recovery week for me. It's pretty funny to do just over 10 hours of exercise in a week and feel guilty about it. My piddly 7.5-mile "long" run yesterday felt like nothing at all. I realize that in the scheme of things, and compared to what normal people do, this is still a lot. But that's the effect ironman training has on a person. It warps one's perspective. I actually felt bored and burnt out during the recovery week. I wasn't motived to train at all. But now that I'm back with a full load of workouts, I'm ready to take them on.

This week I have over 20 hours of workouts on the schedule, and next week will be the same before I start to taper so I'm rested for the race. Over the next two weeks I will be swimming a total of 21,000 meters, biking 280 miles plus a few hours of trainer time, and running 60 miles. And I'm doing a little race, which I'll tell you all about next weekend.

I started the week with a 4,500m swim this morning. My skin is still offgassing chlorine fumes. When I get home after work, my husband will probably still smell the pool chemicals on me. When you marinate for over 90 minutes, it takes a while for that aroma to go away completely.

The funny thing is, I know that I will miss this. A couple of months from now I will look back at these few weeks of peak training and remember how focused I was on my goals. I will remember what great shape I was in (although right now, I don't feel particularly fit -- probably because I'm tired all the time). I'll miss the boring, endless pool workouts, and I'll fondly recall the despair I always feel when I'm 60 miles into a bike ride and I still have 50 miles to go. I'll miss having the motivation to get out of bed at 5:30am. That longing is what made me sign up for Ironman Wisconsin three months after finishing Ironman Coeur d'Alene last year.

But this year, god help me if I sign up for another one. I want to do fun things on weekends again. I want to go to brunch on an occasional Saturday morning. I wonder if there's a 12-step program for triathletes. I'm only partly joking.

Four weeks and six days to go.

August 7, 2006 10:18 AM