..of my training for my first HIM.  Phew.  The race is in three days.  THREE DAYS.  I’m not sure if I’m excited, nervous or sick to my stomach about it.  I seem to cycle through one of those emotions several times during the day, when I’m not distracted with work stuff.

I also wanted to let you know that I am alive.  It’s been a week since my last post!  Whoops!  Honestly, regarding training there isn’t much excitement to report… had a migraine over the weekend which put a damper on my taper training, however I finally managed to man up and finish the rest of my workouts this week. 

After work on Monday I took my bike to Big Shark to have them look over my bike and make sure that everything (wheels, brakes, chain, etc) looked ok.  I would have gotten an actual tune up but I waited too late and when I called last week to make an appointment the soonest time they had available was on the 25th, and that obviously wouldn’t work.  Everything checked out ok, which helped ease a little bit of pre-race anxiety for me.

Then I headed to the pool for one last long swim, 1,850 yards, and to also test out my new goggles I bought on Saturday to replace my leaky ones.  Unfortunately they didn’t have the same pair that I had at REI, so I tried out a new pair that were ‘metallized’.  Whatever that means.  To me it looked like they had a sheen that helped block out the sun glare, which is what my old pair did, but the old pair was tinted grey and these were yellow-ish. 

Boy am I glad I tried them out this week before the race.  I hated them.  Not only were they bright yellow and hard to see in (probably didn’t help that the lighting was dim in the indoor pool), but when they fogged up, it was worse.  They were pretty darn awful.  The visibility was so bad that I took out my headphones because I was starting to feel claustrophobic.  Yes, I sound dramatic, but while all of this was going on I started thinking about the swim, and the wetsuit, and feeling constricted…. I was starting to freak out about the swim portion of the race, which I hadn’t ever worried about!  Ugh.  I managed to finish the swim in the dumb goggles and decided I should maybe consider forking out more $ for a new pair for peace of mind, but it was already 8p and that was the last think I felt like doing after the long day I already had.

The next morning I was up bright and early to get to work for a long day ahead of me, as it was the day that my clinic went live.  I had some last-minute cutover build to complete before the clinic opened and then I headed over to do floor support.  Surprisingly things went pretty well, no huge issues, however it was a long day, and I was on my feet most of it, which I am not used to.  I finally headed home around 6p, which was much later than I was hoping, because I had my last ride to squeeze in before it got dark out.

Well, by the time I finally let the little guy out, changed and got my bike ready, I realized that 16 miles probably weren’t going to happen with the little daylight left and the fact that I didn’t have a light on my bike (I do plan to get one at some point, but riding at night still seems pretty dangerous to me), so the total mileage on the bike was 8.5 miles.  Ouch.  Well, I guess it’s better than not riding at all.

After the ride I headed over to Sports Authority to see if they had my old pair of goggles in stock, and to my happiness, they did!!  And they were even less than what I had originally paid for them.  Hooray!!  I immediately felt better knowing that I wasn’t going to have to do the swim in those horrendous yellow-tinted goggles during the race.

I did some laundry and layed out most of my race gear so that I wouldn’t have to be up all night Wednesday putting it together and stressing.  All of my gear will have to be packed and ready by Wednesday night so that after work on Thursday I can go home and grab my bike and gear and get it to the club truck by 7p, because they are planning on heading out that night!  I’ll be sure to include pictures tonight.  The pile keeps growing… there’s just so much to pack!  Now armwarmers and who knows what else will be included because the weather predictions that morning will be chilly!

This morning I got up early, ran 4 miles at the gym (boo, I always take running outside for granted until I run on the treadmill and realize how much better running outside is) and hurried to work.  I’m getting ready to head to my clinic and do floor support, but figured I’d fill you in on all of the excitement that’s been going on (ha) while I had a few minutes 🙂

The Tri club monthly meeting is tonight after work, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m sure everyone will be pretty pumped and excited about the race this weekend since so many members are going!