Eleven Things Ironman Athletes Will Tell You Before Your First Ironman Race

1. Trust your training.
2. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
3. The six months of training was the hard part. The race is just your celebration of the past few months.
4. Regardless of whether you’re having a good day or bad day, enjoy and treasure the experience. That’s what really matters anyway.
5. Be grateful that you are lucky enough and healthy enough to have the ability to do this.
6. Train hard, race easy.
7. Just think of it as a long training day.
8. Don’t do anything different on race day than what you’ve done during training.
9. Take advantage of the aid stations.
10. You’re going to have a tough time on the run, everybody does. All you have to do is keep moving forward.
11. Trust me, it’ll be worth it in the end.