After leaving the ironman course in a soaking wet, frozen state, I've had time to digest all that went on out there. I couldn't be more happy about my race. Yes, there are things I wish didn't happen (hypothermia perhaps?!?!?), but it's how we deal with these moments that define our athletic spirit. Maybe I wasn't able to cope with the cold as well as others, but I did all I could. And later in the race I found a way to negative split my run (by 4 minutes) even though I was running into a crazy cold head wind that was toppling over entire aid stations. All ironmans are full of good and bad moments, and all we can do is hope that the good overshadow the bad. This is undoubtedly the case for me as I look back at how my race unfolded.
As I let the muscles and body recover from race day I've been doing a lot of swimming...or should I say soaking/floating. It started with an awesome swim in a 131m pool in Vancouver.
followed up my what might be my longest hot tub soaking session ever. I felt like my body hadn't warmed up from the race. And those Canadians don't believe in heating their pools either. Between the pool, and ice baths, I was once again frozen to the core.
Now that I'm back in San Diego I've slowly gotten back into the pool to mimic some resemblance of swimming. I know Kona is all about maintaining fitness, and have no doubt that I gained an insane amount of fitness from my Canadian 140.6! Today I'll dig through my closet of running shoes, and hit the trails for what I hope will be an enjoyable return to running.
