what did I just do?

Recovering from an Iron distance race is weird.

Day 1, I felt pretty good. I thought, this seems like a piece of cake. I felt sore in weird places (abs, lower back), and sunburned, and wasn't too thrilled about walking, but generally I didn't feel like I'd just done an Ironman.

Day 2 the real soreness set in - and the random sleepiness. And the flakiness. The sentences don't get finished. The thoughts trail off to nowhere.

Here it is, Day 3, and I'm still in lala land. I'm sore on one part of my lower back, my eyes are scratchy, and I'm sleepy at odd times, but still not too bad.

I'm still not ravenously hungry. I mean, I think an Ironman is worth about a billion calories, so shouldn't I be ready to chew your arm off?

So - the race report...I should write that, huh?!

My husband and kids had elected to stay home. We thought this would just be an unfeasibly taxing experience for the pikachus - hanging out for a sprint distance or running an aid station is fun and exciting for them. A full ironman is a big day, even grownup spectators get bored. I was a little sad about this, but agreed it was too much to ask the little people. I thought I'd mostly do this alone - which was OK with me. When I'm stressed I'm a little short with people. Probably best you not get too close.

In the days leading up to it, I wasn't as stressed about this race, in general, as I thought I would be. I did what I could to stay off my feet, keep my energy low, I had a really good sleep on the night leading up to the race, I ate well when I was hungry.

21CM picked me up from Oakland airport and sherpa'd my happy ass all over California. Have I mentioned I heart her? She volunteered this willingly - put up with me and my stressed, mixed bag of emotions and cheerfully dragged me all over Sonoma County to view the course....which was about the time the stress set in. Viewing the bike and run course, I realized just how hilly this thing would be. There were a lot of hills. I've trained on some hills, but this terrain suddenly seemed a fair bit different from what I'm used to.

Oh crap. Oh crap crap crap crap.

And it was hot. Not just kinda warm, but a stinky horrible hot I wasn't really used to. Where I am, in the belly of the furnace, we have dry heat: it gets hot, you sweat, it evaportates. Over there, in hippy land, it's a humid hot. Really hot.

oh crap crap crap.

It was about that time that my confidence evaporated.

I'm supposed to do this in this heat? on those hills? I really thought I'd be OK, but now I'm not sure anymore...

Crap crap crap crap

Oh well.

I mean, what was I gonna do? Go home? Say no? Too late now!

We planned a blogger dinner thing at a restaurant in town. My mom and her partner decided to come out and watch and keep me company, so I invited them along to dinner - they'd just flown in and I hadn't seen them yet. 21CM and I arrived at dinner venue and were chatting to our friends when someone short and pink whizzed past my view. Aww, someone brought kids. And then, someone else short and pink tackled my legs.

Wait a minute...these are my children! How cool! So yeah - my family decided to surprise me by sending my little people over with their grandmas. Aww!

I insisted that they make my kiddos sleep in for the morning, no reason to have them up at the crack of dawn, they'd be out all night. So after I kissed them goodbye, we went back to the hotel for the final organizing touches to my stuff - organizing special needs bags, packing my underseat bag, writing myself a little list for the 4am wakeup fuzzy thinking hour, stuff like that.

We got up at 4 and had breakfast. There's nothing really to add to this, other than I had no trouble getting up after 4.5hours of sleep. That's so wrong.

Driving to Johnson's Beach, I had an impending sense of oh wow, I guess I'm really doing this. I don't have to do it, but I'm here.

In transition I set up my area, racked the bike, and then panicked. Everyone who knows me knows that I'm all about holding it together, all the time. It's what I do. There was nothing in particular that set me off, I had just been consciously building to this moment and I was really freaked out scared about doing this race. I had a moment where I truly fell apart - and the racers around me saw that I was falling apart and backed away. Huh. I guess they don't like Cryathletes.

I borrowed SW TriGal's sleeveless wetsuit for this race, and boy am I glad I did. 21CM helped me squeeze it on and goobed me up good, and then sent me on my way.

My stomach got tight. Oh God. It's time.

I waded into the water to find that it was, for a change, not shockingly cold. For a race in open water, this is highly unusual, I think contributed to me feeling pretty calm about treading out to the start. Really calm.

5 minutes to 7, the airhorn squawked and I was on my way.

Swimming. Not freaking, not panicking, swimming. Calmly stroking, breathing, moving. And for once, actually enjoying the swim. The two loop swim course goes under two bridges, past river side homes. There were people in boats and standing on the banks watching the race. Someone had a campfire, someone else was cooking bacon. I know this because instead of being focussed on my panic, I was enjoying the air - the scenery - the people. I even tried drafting for a bit - but the person I was drafting off was too slow - which never happens - so I mostly swam alone. I was wary, on the first loop, of overtaxing myself or getting bored on the second loop. Instead, I found that the first loop actually gave me a lot of confidence to throw myself into the 2nd loop a little harder. I had set my watch a few minutes before the start to go off every 15 minutes (for nutrition on the bike and run), and I heard it underwater as I swam - so I was totally aware of my time as I came out of the water.

Swim - 1:30:21 - a totally awesome swim time for me!

OK, since this is my first ironman, I am gonna drag this post out a bit. I've got a little time, seeing as how I'm recovering and stuff...Plus, I'm tired again and it's time for my Iron sleep.

Heh. Iron sleep.