Cramming

My A race is in less than four weeks. Last year at this race -- the Northeast Triathlon, my only Olympic distance tri so far -- I vowed to never, ever do it again. It was painful. It was hot. It was hilly. It was LONG.

It was horrible.

After the initial self-pity, I re-examined my vow. I knew I could improve on my overall time. I knew where I could push and where I should hold back, unlike last year when I basically took the entire race pretty conservatively because it was the first time at that distance.

So I signed up again.

And then I skipped far too many key workouts. And didn't work on my biking as much as I should have. And thought about dropping out of the race or selling my bib to someone else.

And then I really had a reality check and came to the conclusion that I was being a big baby.

So now I have 27 days to go, and I'm trying to cram about 8 weeks of training into less than 4 weeks. My swimming has improved tremendously since last year. (These enormous linebacker shoulders are good for something after all!!!) My running is probably about the same as it was last year. My biking... well... my biking is what it is.

But I'll go out there on August 16 and do the absolute best I can do on that day. If I finish with a faster time than last year, I'll be ecstatic. If I'm slower than last year, I'll be disappointed... but not devastated.

What would be devastating would be to not even try.