Back to the grind.

The Ironman training grind. 

Aside from a hideously slow pace, I feel like I never left. Oh yeah, I remember wind so strong at Turtle Bay that I feel like I'm moving backwards. I remember this funny tunnel vision I get at about 100 miles. I remember the lead in the legs when I start my long run the next morning.

There was a time warp on Saturday, did you guys feel it? Somehow my 110 mi ride and 2.4 mi swim race became a 9.5 hour day. We left Fred's at 6 am. We hummed right along to Waimea, arriving in 42 miles and two hours exactly.

Fred, the super sherpa for the day, showed up with the vanagon for the bikes and our blueseventy cheater suits and goggles. He then drove us back to the starting line at Pipeline. It looked like this:

OK, I'm lying, but there was a teensy shorebreak. We started an hour after getting off the bike. The current was awesome.. I could have floated to Waimea in 2 hours easy, but I forgot my innertube. Before I knew it, we were at the point off of Shark's Cove, and my master's coach Joe's voice hit me - last year he told me to take a left at the point and hug the coast to Waimea. The pack went straight. I hesitated - then took the left. My drafter came with me, I felt her on my toes and was happy to not be alone, and hoped it was Katherine. A minute later Wil swam by, smiling and waving under water in his pink cap and teeny bikini. I found the channel between the rocks around the point no problem, while a hundred yellow caps swam half way past Waimea, took a 90 degree left and fell so far back I could no longer see them when I breathed. The girl on my feet came up on my right as we fought the tide into the beach and I thought hell if I'm going to let you by after that ride and picked it up a little. I crossed the line in 52:33 with Katherine right behind me. She'd been trying to come up to take a pull. Oops. It was enough for my second swim race AG win, and a PR on that course of 6 minutes. Now if I can con Bree or Hillary into wearing my chip at Kona I can use this low 50s as evidence in my favor when they charge me with cheating.

If only the rest of the day went so well. Katherine more than repaid my swim pull by dragging my butt up 5 miles of climbing Pineapple Hill. We were more than even then.. but at mile 80 someone had a tantrum. The headwind was so strong and my legs so unfit that I couldn't even hold onto the paceline. So I stopped to sit down, have a little anxiety attack about my level of non-fitness, and cry for a minute. Katherine talked me down and didn't let me call Ramsey for a ride home. He wouldn't have come anyway, he always tells me to start walking when I have a mechanical or quit and someone I know will come by and give me a ride home. Oddly, he's always right. We had 30 miles to go and