Halfway Training Weekend

This upcoming weekend is our "Halfway to Ironman" training weekend.  We will be spending the weekend in Lake San Antonio and training on the Wildflower Long Distance course.  One of many things that makes Wildflower so unique is that you have to camp!  So not only will we be training on one of the most difficult triathlon courses in the country, we will also be sleeping in tents, on the cold and hard ground, the night before and the night after having swam 1.2 miles, biking 56 miles, and running 13.1 miles.  We will have to prepare our food out of ice chests and gas stoves or BBQs.  I'm already at a loss for how the heck I am going to eat a sufficient breakfast to start 9 hours of training at 5am in the dark.  Oh, and have I mentioned the weather is just awful these past few days?  I think this weekend will be more about testing my mental abilities than my physical abilities.

This course terrifies me.  One of the hills is called Nasty Grade.  And, I have already been told to go into the run expecting to "hike" rather than run for the first 6 miles of it (mind you, I've never even ran more than 6 miles to date and now I have to do 13)!  Last year, I went down with Nick to help volunteer for the training weekend.  I never imagined that I would actually be doing the same course a year later.  I brought my bike with me and did my volunteer bit in the morning and attempted to ride the Olympic distance bike course that afternoon.  I did not make it.  I think I went about 9 miles out, gave up, and turned around.  It was so difficult for me and I had to walk my bike in a couple places.  Granted, I was an extremely novice rider then and I didn't learn to properly change my gears until about a month later.  I'm hoping that was half my battle.

Yesterday, I was thinking about how when I went there last year, I just assumed how much these people had been training to get where they were and how they all finished.  And, here I am thinking about how I am nowhere near close to their level at the same time last year.  Yet, yesterday, Sedonia commented that we have biked more and swam in the open water more than they did last year before Wildflower weekend.

A few weeks ago, our coach was talking to us about instituting cut-off times for our training weekend.  Since I am officially an "Aquabiker" for Vineman, they asked if I would rather be allowed to finish the bike and they just SAG me forward to the run or if they should cut me off at the bike.  Since Vineman comes first, I want to be allowed to finish the bike.  But, I was laughing at the concept that we were already discussing the plan for me knowing that I will have a difficult time meeting the cutoffs.  My silver lining is that even though this is our team's "Halfway" weekend, IMAZ is three months after the other events we are training for, so it's truly more like "Quarterway" weekend for me.