The Day After Ironman: Eight Weeks and Counting

Where did this year go? Some days, I feel the future hurtling toward me just as fast as my optimism is hurtling away. How the heck am I gonna do this thing? Eight weeks from now, we'll know.

Friday night, had to be towed from the lake for the third time in about as many weeks by Swim Coach, after the mystery malady struck again after about half a mile of swimming. Went home and googled "open water breathing coughing" or some such, and am fairly well convinced that I may have swimming-induced-pulmonary-edema in these episodes, on top of the vocal cord issue. Am I a hypochondriac? You betcha. And triathlon gives me three sports to worry about! But just because someone's paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not being followed, as they say. Trust me: I do an internship at a mental health center, and we keep a close eye on folks who suffer from paranoia.

I suspect my swim coach, whom I actually adore, thinks it's all mental---I also suspect he doesn't quite understand that it's normal to get concerned when you're having breathing trouble out in the middle of a lake. As he was trying to ferry me back to the beach Friday by having me clamp onto the underside of his kayak, he said "Are you tense?" " Dude, I'm on my back in the water clinging to a kayak running over me while I'm coughing and having chest pain. No, I'm not tense." I look forward to the day when these little adventures are just funny anecdotes I get to tell over Sunday brunch after sleeping in, like normal people do.

On the up-side: I got into the pool on Saturday and swam 2.4 miles...not fast, but if it were race day and this were my time, it would do. No issues...so, what's the difference? Did two hours of speed intervals before that. On Sunday, rode out to Verona and then did a loop with some of my favorite riding peeps, then did an hour on the elliptical at the Y as my run segment. The ride was great. I was surprised that our pace, according to all computers involved, was 13.1 miles an hour---so much for the increased speed promised by the aerobar guy....it was my slowest loop ever. Still, everybody has been saying the wind was wicked, so we'll just count it as a windy training ride.

Today was a recovery day, so Meghan and I went to the campus radio station and made our Doctors Without Borders/Plumpy'nut Ironman pitch. ..which was far more fun than being hauled around a lake like a barnacle on a kayak. Ironman: take the bad with the good and keep moving forward.