It's ON, baby! Cobourg tri, here I come!

Ooops! I've done it again.

I signed up for the Cobourg Olympic Triathlon coming this Saturday. My running program called for a tune-up 10k race this weekend anyway, so I might as well go all the way.

First things first. Yesterday my progressive run was brutal. The problem with people ramping up for a big event is that for a while, almost EVERY quality workout is the hardest one they ever did. Well, that happened to me (again) yesterday. It was HOT, it was WINDY, I ran at noon, which was stupid, and I started too fast. When the time came, at 20km, for the last interval at half-marathon pace, I had nothing left in the tank. I ran only 750m instead of the 1k I had planned. When I took my right shoe off, I had a little surprise waiting for me:


I'm the proud owner of a huge blister, which I'm hoping will heal really fast. I didn't run today and I think I will skip tomorrow and bike and swim instead.

So yesterday evening I was wondering about the weekend. Should I sign-up or not. I was leaning toward no. Then I watched the women (I had recorded it) triathlon and got a bit pumped. Then it was time for the men's and I nearly had a heart attack watching Simon Whitfield giving everything he had and winning the silver medal. What a race!

It was done. This morning I booked a Zip rental car for Saturday morning at 5 am and signed-up for the Olympic distance tri in Cobourg, which is about 100 km from my house.

So here we go again. For those of you who have never raced, you have to know that the act of signing-up for an event changes something. All of a sudden, you get vivid flashes where you visualize sections of the upcoming race. I catch myself just sitting there, reliving sections of past races, my body actually reacting to the arousal. My heart races, my palms get sweaty, I can "feel" the fatigue that awaits me. Make no mistake, an Olympic distance tri is a serious event where you finish completely empty. HIM and IM distances are even longer, but the Olympic tri can kick your ass. I will probably finish in about 2:45, so that's a long time to go hard.

I'm excited and even though I which I had biked a bit more, I feel pretty good about this. More to come...