Nerves

Once again, I find myself 3 weeks out from a half ironman, and once again, I feel underprepared.

Yesterday I went to do some course recon over at the Patriot course itself. The course is fantastic. Pretty flat with some undulations to keep you feeling fast. A few nasty pavement spots, but overall pretty good. It's clearly not as straightforward a course as Mooseman, but we seemed to navigate it ok. It's two loops of 29 miles each, so 2 miles longer than the regulation HIM. If they took this distance off of the run, I would be totally happy with that, but obviously they don't.

Despite my misgivings coming out of winter training, my biking is feeling REALLY good now, and I feel like the bike in this half is going to be fun, not boring. The terrain allows you to get that racing feeling. I'm not feeling like I have to hold back to stick to a race plan. Also, there's something about riding for 58 miles that is way easier than riding 90K. I replaced my chain and cassette two weeks ago and the bike is riding like new. Plus the last few long rides I've done have involved very little drafting, so I'm feeling prepped for this ride by myself.

I won't go as fast as my last half, but that's to be expected cause the courses are so different. Yesterday we held an average of 17.6 mph. Busso worked out to about 18mph. I'd be really happy to hold around 17.

But then there's the run. I did a 45 minute run off the bike yesterday. And it didn't hurt as much as the 30 minutes last week, but it still felt hard, and that's not even half of the distance that I actually have to do. I haven't done any long runs. Everything has been focused on not aggravating injury. It feels a lot like Noosa two years ago, when my shins were so bad I pretty much didn't run before the race, and it killed me mentally. I need to come up with some sort of mantra to get me through it.

Predictions for this year:

• 30 minute swim (that's 2 min faster than last year which seems fast, but I'm feeling more confident in pushing it in the swim)
• 3:20 bike (20 minutes slower, but it is 2 miles longer and not deadflat)
• 2 hour run (no idea if this is reasonable)

That puts me at 5:50 before transitions. Add 10 minutes for transitions (this year I really need to hydrate better). And we're looking at a 6 hour half. It's a little disappointing to think this year's half will be a good deal slower than last years, despite feeling fitter, but I need to set reasonable expectations.