Fountain Of Youth, My Ass.

Morning Workout (T minus 6 days)
SPINNING CLASS...
45 minutes

...RUN
20 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Lactate Threshold (Zone 2) and Steady State Threshold (Zone 4)

Random Comments: Well, I guess this is it. Six days until I de-flower myself at Ironman USA. In 7 days I will have crossed over to the other side, no longer an Ironman virgin. If all goes well, and I fully expect that it will, I'll have joined the elite group of masochistic buffoon's who like to think that traveling 140.6 miles in one day is actually a healthy endeavor.

I hate to break the news to y'all, but it's not. Racing Ironman distances is not the fountain of youth. Au contrare, mon ami, it's probably more like the Fountain of Hip Replacement.

But I guess that's not the point. The point is that in 1982 Julie Moss showed the world the true meaning of "the battle of the human spirit." As she miraculously crawled across the finish line in Kona, a nation of triathletes were born. I am one within that Triathlete Nation. It was Julie Moss's will to survive that drove me to where I am now: six days short of Lake Placid. And you know what the funny thing is? Julie Moss didn't even win that race - she came in second. And I'll bet you all the money in my murse that at least 9 out of 10 of you can't give me the name of the woman who beat her (without looking it up first, that is). And therein lies yet another point (apparently I'm full of them today): Ironman is not about winning. It's only about crossing that finish line. Everyone who finishes is a winner.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.
Cause I fully expect to cross that finish line and I fully expect that I won't be anywhere near winning anything. And I'm pretty damn positive that I'm going to be pretty damn overjoyed with myself just for finishing. As a matter of fact, let me give myself a little practice pat on the back right now. [pat][pat]. Yep, that'll work out just fine.

So Cat and I fly out in the morning and we'll be in Lake Placid the next day. I'm scared. Excited. Petrified. Anticipative. Reluctant. Mortified. Eager. When it comes down to it, I've pretty much got the entire emotional spectrum covered. I just watched the Ironman Lake Placid video on YouTube and that seemed to calm me down a bit for reasons unbeknownst to me.

Now I need to pack. So I bid ye farewell.
I thank all of you for supporting me (that is, if there's anybody out there actually reading this crap). My next words will be coming at you from Lake Placid, which I can pretty much guarantee will be filled with some level of anxiety. See what you've got to look forward to?


Oh...and for the record, I don't carry a murse. It's just that murse is a much funnier word than wallet.