Florida or Bust

But before I go...Happy Halloween! These little kitties are all dressed up to celebrate the day! I made four of these..one for Sporty Spice and three for friends' kids and they came out so cute! I definitely stole the idea...from the Wishcraft catalog. They wanted $98 for these personalized cats! Yikes. I knew I could whip those up! The real beauty of being a craft supply hoarder is that when you see an idea, you just go to your stash and boom! you're good to go. I love that.
This little tag banner was a "Bellaween" project from a couple of years ago I am just now getting around to making.

And now that I have successfully used crafting as a means of procrastinating and avoiding reality (it is SO good for that!), I guess I should address the big....looming....event.......Scarier than Halloween! Ironman Florida is now less than a week away!!!

I don't know how to accurately sum up how I feel. Every time is so different. I am really, really anxious this go around. Mostly around the pain in my leg. I always say the motivation I, personally, have when I train every day or do something else that will be beneficial to the training or recovery, I do it for one reason. This will be the seventh time I've stood on an Ironman start line, the fourth in Panama City Beach. I KNOW what it feels like to stand there waiting for the start cannon. And the LAST thing I want to have to ask myself on that morning is "was there something more I could have done? Something less? Did I give 100% during these past months? Was there something I would have changed?" I'm sure there will always be a small degree of second guessing, but I want to stand there looking out at the sunrise over that ocean, with my feet in the sand, surf rolling over my toes, with as few of those thoughts as possible. I think I have a few more of those thoughts than usual this time. I don't know if I took training TOO seriously at times or not seriously enough...really. Sometimes that middle ground, so crucial, can prove elusive. This past month has been really hard, both mentally and physically, with some pain from my leg I thought was behind me. But, in parting, I can only say, I will give 100% on the day. I will do my best to crowd out any of those thoughts and focus on every second and what I can do, if anything, at that moment. To finish will be wonderful, to be near any of my previous IM times, especially that of my first one exactly ten years ago...divine.

I Hope This Isn't "The Ironman That Teaches Me the Great Overtraining Lesson"

And just as I was gloating about how good my leg was feeling compared to a year ago. I mean, I was really noticing, "wow, I can go about not only training, but my chores and errands, and not be in pain", and "wow, the stiffness after a long run is so noticeably less". And then I got to my 20-plus mile runs in preparation for this Ironman. Weekend before last, I'd worked up gradually to my longest one, a 24 mile. Yep, that was the run that did it. The run itself wasn't so bad, but the soreness in my (previously broken) leg started that evening...and hasn't much diminished. I'm on an all-out effort to pull out all the stops on my "tricks" for putting it back together. ART therapy, massage, stretching and more stretching, whirlpool, ice, Pilates, pain cream and compression tights. And I'm trying not to freak out. I have just over 2 weeks remaining and the taper is officially here. Which has brought with it the reality of the work that is going into leaving this many animals with a sitter, 3 cats with ongoing medical issues, and what it is going to take to get them set up for me to leave.

So I think I shall think I shall dwell on something completely unrelated...Halloween! I've been crafting and decorating, and managed to get Sporty Spice to the Picture place with his costume last week. Isn't this the cutest astronaut you've ever seen? And appropriately, we have tickets to a big Halloween party at the Chabot Space and Science Center.

What a Difference A Year Makes

It's hard to believe it was a year ago this weekend I tripped over the finish line in Kona! The big party is happening there today...and I am exactly four weeks away from another finish line. Tapering starts in another week and it is starting to feel like it. The nervous energy with nowhere to go. Today I'll start the big countdown calender of the epic list of things that have to happen in the next 28 days to get this many animals taken care of, one bike on a transport truck, and 3 humans on a plane. But first I have to go ride about 100 miles. Happy Ironman Day!