Our second 70.3 (Half IronMan Texas)

In about 2 days and change we will be lining up at the start line to what will be our second 70.3. Leading to this one in some regards has been a different experience. It is actually weird but we are not feeling as nervous, as with our first... I guess you always remember your first. Also we have been really smart in our training leading up to it, smart in the sense that we haven't crashed... Yes it is still a fear and a serious safety consideration in all our workouts particularly those involving 2 wheels.

We have been training a lot, logging 13-15 hours (some longer) weeks for a while now for our full ironman in May, so to say it one way... It just feels like a long training day. That doesn't mean that we are not respectful of the distance, we are still very respectful of it, it is a good beating on our bodies on that long training day, so we are being smart about it too. Doing Austin as our first probably opened our eyes to a lot of realities and also training for IMTX has just made us so much stronger. It has been a slow but steady process for both of us, but we have seen the progress we've made on all 3 disciplines. Our long swims continue to be long... A bit faster than they were 5 months ago when we were training for Austin. Our bike probably has been the strongest it has been in the 4 years we've been riding, not even when we were training for our first MS150. Nowadays riding 85-90 miles on a long training day is actually not that painful after all... Not sure about running a full marathon after it but at least we can start walking one :). Our run, it has improved as well a lot, our paces have been pushed to our limits by Coach M, and we appreciate it because come Sunday we will put it up to the test. The fact that we can run 15-16 miles now on a long run day just seems unreal knowing that a year ago Puli couldn't run for 8 weeks after running a 10K :), yes we were very out of shape.

So going back to what we think of Sundays long training day, we will take it as such... More than anything we will have fun! Keep smiling and being smart about our "training" it will be a good measurement day for IM TX which is only a mere 5 weeks out and fast approaching. Right now we don't think we are as nervous as we were on the weeks leading to Austin's race, the accident that time didn't help the situation but still we were still very nervous, we were stepping into the unknown, we had a few long swims, the bike we knew wasn't a problem but we had never run a half marathon distance before (much less getting off the bike), now it isn't the case anymore. We know more about our bodies, our strengths and weaknesses , and also how we go about different situations. Yet it is an unknown course, but hey... Every course will be unknown at least once... Until you go back to crush your own records... Which we have no intentions for Austin... Maybe in the distant future... Very distant :), but at least having that unknown factor is actually a good thing it is what makes this sport fun, the venues, the new people, everything that you see on race day.

So, if you are reading this and want to follow us on Sunday's journey, you can go to the Ironman website (www.ironman.com) and follow us with our bib numbers... Res: 1726 and Puli: 406.

Hopefully our next post will be on Monday with our race recap after having a few recovery drinks on e beach :)

Until then... Cheers!!