It's already the end of September, so it's only a month until Marine Corp. I haven't run for a week, when I did a 10K in Barcelona, Spain while on vacation. I did do a lot of walking (I'm talking hours and hours a day), but I also gave myself free rein on food while over there (drinking chocolate! beer! ice cream! beer! bread! beer!). Luckily, no major damage, as the weight stayed the same, but I've got to get my ass back on the road tomorrow. I've got my last long run next weekend, which is supposed to be 20 miles, but it might get cut back to 15, since Debi's having trouble with her hip and thinks it might be her IT band. Ouch.

I have on ouch too, but it's not keeping me from running - after a 40 mile bike ride a few weeks ago, my wrists and thumbs were sore (I have carpal tunnel already), and have been kinda achy since. It doesn't help that, for whatever reason, I've been sleeping with my arms under me with my wrists bent at bizarre angles. My right wrist doesn't want to bend too much right now, so i'm going to try sleeping with a brace. We'll see. I don't plan on biking a whole lot until after the marathon anyway.

The plan is just to survive the marathon, and then spend the next few months getting ready to really train. I'm going to try and put on some muscle (back to the Muscle-Tech classes with Tina at the LAC; I may try and drag my sister with me) and drop some weight. I'd like to get down to 133 or so, but the lowest I've really ever been was 137, and that was after a bout of food poisoning. My doc says I'm fine at the weight I'm at, but while my top half is pretty lean, my lower body leaves some to be desired. That, and every pound is a pound that I'll have to lug with me for 140.6 miles, so the less pounds there are, the better. It would be easire if I just didn't like food so damn much.

The word that I took the plunge and registered for the Ironman is slowly getting out. Two people at work know (one I told, the other found out here), a number of my friends know, and I told my sister. The response has been more of less positive (my sister, being practical, asked if I have told my doctor). I have decided not to tell my parents until sometime next summer. Why, you may ask? Well, let's use this an an example:

During my first marathon in Chicago in 2005, my husband (who was following me around the city to cheer me on) received a phone call to confirm I wasn't dead. That's right. Not dead. My mom had some pretty serious concerns that I was not going to survive running 26.2 miles. So one can imagine her thoughts of a race covering 140.6 miles in one day. (On the plus side, when I called her after last year's marathon, her response was less fatalistic: "I'm glad you're done. Don't do it again.")

On a very positive note, I've quit having panic attacks every hour. I'm sure they'll start up again when the nitty-gritty training really starts, but I'm just kinda enjoying the idea of the race right now. I put aero-bars on my bike (2005 Fuji Bordeaux) and tonight I'm taking it over to Debi's to test them out. I'm not a strong cyclist, and I can use any help I can get. I would coat myself in Vaseline if I thought it would make my more aerodynamic.

And so it begins

Today, Ben and I participated in the Mayor's Hike & Bike, and I decided to wear the Louisville Ironman jersey that he bought me. I had several people yell out their congratulations, and then I had to explain that no, I hadn't done it, my husband had bought it for me to keep me motivated, blah blah blah. Shallow or not, it did make me feel good that people thought I actually *could* have done it (though if I had, I probably still wouldn't be able to walk right, much less ride a bike). So, after much debating, I took the plunge. I came home, and without even changing out of my stinky, sweaty riding clothes, I signed up for Ironman Louisville 2008. Yippee! I had a brief moment of holy crap, what the hell did I just do?, but I'm okay now.