19 Days to Race Day

In the words of Lance Armstrong after he finished his first marathon: "Oh. My. God. Ouch."

Just finished a four hour, 18 mile training run. Exhausted. Legs dying.

This is my HUGE week of training, the biggest it will get before the race (and frankly, if all goes to plan, it will be my biggest week ever):

Yesterday was an hour run and a 2:40 hills bike ride - over an hour and a half of that time was spent riding uphill.

Today the long run.

Tomorrow easy, "just" a long swim and an easy bike ride.

Thursday is 70 miles on the bike (probably about 5 hours).

Friday is a 90 minute lactate-threshold run and an easy swim.

Saturday is an easy run before driving to Calgary to watch Alex's race.

Sunday, since I will be busy following Alex around, will thank goodness be an off day.

All told, if I hit everything I've planned, then this should be a week of about 17 training hours. In other words, I'm going to be suffering. Big time. Kinda like right now.

I realize that I owe everyone a post about last week, including weekly training totals, the disaster of a race I did on Saturday, and my fun Saturday evening tubing the Clark Fork River. I'll start working on it and probably get it put up here by tomorrow.

Right now, however, there's only five things in the world I care about:

1) Lunch

2) Ice bath to reduce muscle damage and inflammation

3) Hot shower to follow ice bath to revive blood flow and help my body start healing

4) Nap

5) Long massage at 5:30

After those five things are taken care of, then I'll start caring about the rest of you again. Now, let's see if I'm able to walk to the kitchen...