I did it!

I have completed crash week.  Here are a couple of the highlights:

On Thursday I ran 26 km.  This is the furthest I have ever run in my life at one time.  It felt great.  My muscles were kind of throbbing and achy the rest of the day but they felt perfectly fine when I woke up the next morning.  I had no joint pain or foot pain.  I definitely could have kept on going...and I'll have to in the race.  I'll have to go 16 km further than that after biking 180 km.

On Saturday I biked for 150 km and did 100 of these with Adam, while his mom watched our kids.  This is the furthest I have ever biked consecutively in my life.  We were both really concerned about the cold weather.  A high of 8 degrees is really chilly for cycling.  So we improvised.  Our feet were our big concern and we only own one set of toe warmers, so I got to use those and I also put plastic bags between my two pairs of socks to hold in the body heat.  Adam cut holes in the bottom of a pair of wool socks and put these over his shoes, so that he could clip into his pedals.

Oh and I should mention that I fell twice that day.  I know; twice, can you believe it??  The first fall I was on my own and I was trying to make a u-turn in some gravel and caught an edge.  I didn't even have time to think about unclipping.  I scraped and bruised my knee and elbow a bit but it's not serious.  Second fall was with Adam when we were climbing a hill by C.O.P and I accidently geared into a harder gear and came to an abrupt stop.  Luckily I fell over into some long grass and with all this great falling practice, I have learned not to try to break my fall...just to let my body take the impact.
So there I was, laying on my side, with one foot still awkwardly clipped in and I started to cry because I felt so frustrated and annoyed.  Then almost instantly I saw the humor and started laughing pretty hard, so by the time Adam came back to check on my he couldn't tell if I was laughing or crying.  Once he learned I was laughing we had a really good laugh together.

So here's the summary of my crash week:

• 9 km of swimming
• 344 km of biking
• 47.5 km of running

  P.S. I had a short run scheduled after my long bike and I ripped off 6 km in 30 minutes.  My legs felt fresh and responsive.  Looks like I'm ready for the Ironman.  The training has paid off.