waiting daze

It's been awhile since I've posted...I don't have a good reason. I've thought of lots of interesting topics during my workouts, but none of them have made it out of my head. Mostly because I've been unable to follow through on things lately. I have a ton of things on my to do list, things that really need to be finished, but I've been lacking the drive to go anything accomplished. This seems kind of odd to me since I'm 12 days away from *hopefully* accomplishing something I've been dreaming about for 25 years. And in reality, I'm feeling fairly "accomplished", because of the things I've been able to complete just training for Ironman.

In the last 3 months

• I've ridden 100+ miles 4 times, and hit 114 on one of those rides (before this year, the longest ride I'd done was 62 miles and I bonked hard and limped in the last 5).
• I've run 20 miles 4 times and prior to this the longest run I'd done was 15. The coolest part of these runs was feeling good at the end of 2 of them (definitely not all four though!)
• I've had many many swims of 4000+ meters - before this, I'm pretty sure I'd never gone farther than 2500 maybe 3000 in a couple of workouts.
• When my little boy turned 2 at the beginning of August it was amazing to think that two years ago I couldn't sit up in bed or walk up and down stairs without being in excruciating pain. (we had an emergency c-section with him.)
  
• Just last weekend I did probably my favorite workout leading up to FullRev a 70 mile bike ride followed by 8.5 mile run. Just a fun fun workout.

So here I am thinking, wow, I never thought that I'd be able to do this stuff, and here I am doing it, and recovering from it, and doing it again!

It's just everything else that feels like it's so far gone, that I don't have the energy to get it going again... I just keep putting everything in this mental bucket of "after Ironman".

Of course, at the same time, I can't help thinking about racing "after Ironman"; why waste this fitness?? I worked really hard to be ready for this race, why would I just stop afterward? I also think it might be a way to "hedge my bets" against a bad race. If things go wrong and I don't have the race I want, or I don't finish, maybe if I have all these things planned for afterward, it (not finishing FullRev) wont suck so much (doubtful, but maybe).

So basically I'm just a big mess right now.

I feel tired all the time (except when I'm working out) but my coach says that's normal (due to the taper and the body's reaction to decreased volume) and should start getting better any day now.

I know I need to pack, but it's seems senseless because I keep unpacking everything to use for workouts or pack in a different place.

I KNOW I can't "squeeze in" anymore fitness, the work I did, is done and all there is to do now is keep things moving without working too hard, recover, eat right, and recover (yes, recover, recover, recover). but I really want to TRY to squeeze in more fitness (this is one of the many times I've been SO glad to have coach Laura getting me through all of this, she explicitly stated in my taper instructions, do no more than your planned workouts)

I can't help but worry that I haven't trained enough, or hard enough, or smart enough; sure I did almost all of the workouts Coach Laura put on my plan, but what if those that I missed end up being the really important ones!?!?

I'm worried about packing for every eventuality and then in the next breath I find myself saying things like "if it rains I get wet! no big deal" "if it's hot, I'll use more ice, no big deal" "if it's cold I've got enough fat on me to keep me warm, no big deal.

Through all of this "I'm a mess" feeling; I'm also strangely calm about race day. Every time I think about the race I imagine myself having an awesome day and it feels really good. then I think, Jill, you know your are going to have some tough times out there, everyone does, you have to be prepared for that, but then this odd "we only allow positive thinking" section of my brain says "screw you, negative brain, we're gonna kick ass!" as if it's the only possible outcome.

And here is the really funny thing... I feel like a caged animal... like, enough waiting, let's get this party started!!! I don't want to "get it over" but I DO want to "get it started". Yeah, and I've 12 more days of waiting.