turning away from Steelhead.

BACK! after a long hiatus of being cockblocked by bloggers spam-targeting robots! Victory is mine.

I am loosing hope that I will actually do the Steelhead half iron on August 2nd

The circumstances that precipitated this sinking feeling are really important to me, so I will blog them. It all started with my not-excellent but hearty performance at Wildflower. FedEx totally hozed my bicycle in shipping to California so I spent the next month trying to get them to pay me back my claimed insurance amount, and until I got the check I was unwilling to repair the bike because they might need to do a closer or additional inspection of the packaging or damage. There went all of May, but finally they came through and paid me without much haggling, just learning the ropes of how to actually get it done.

Somewhere in the mix here I go for an incredibly long and arduous run, that turned out to be on a random whim of a tuesday night with no regard for nutrition or sleep preparation or anything and I ran 11 miles. I had hoped I crossed over into 13.1 but mapmyrun said otherwise. I was so proud of myself, cranking out my absolutely consistent 8.5 minute miles.

That being said, my only experience biking 56 miles was on the hilly miles of Barrington Hills. My confidence was low from how much of a struggle that was... the saga continues...

June was fantastic and interesting. I'm totally blowing off my workouts because I'm dating this great girl and she's moving out of town so we're trying to make up for future lost time. But we do manage to squeeze in a great 4 mile run together, which was a lot of fun. (Turns out that she's going to to a marathon this year, beacuse she had set her sights on it a while ago, but turned away because of hip and knee problems.) But aside from a few rides here and there to get the bike back in shape for the big MS50 ride, this is literally my only major workout.

Somewhere in the mix here I do the MS150 "Tour De Farms". This was a 2-day, 75 mile per day event with major rest stops every 15 miles. I couldn't have had a better time, and I totally survived the distance and time, thanks to kickass bike shorts from Pearl Izumi and Sugoi. Riding on the flats, as I imagine the Steelhead Half Ironman to be, was SO MUCH easier than the Barrington Hills hills. Confidence boosted.

Then Steelhead sends out an elevation map, which makes no real sense to me and so I have to go ride it, but lo and behold I'm going out of town for two weeks on vacation and I get back on the 11th of July, leaving me 3 weeks to get into shape to swim 1.2, bike 56 and do a solid 13 mile run afterwards in the DEAD HEAT of a Michigan summer day.

FUCK that.

I'm not sure I can handle this, at this point, or wether its just dumb.

I will resume thought about this when I get back on the 11th and maybe do a full distance triathlon that weekend and see how i feel.