I can’t believe it’s finally here! Race week! This journey started on September 4, 2013. The day I registered with Meghan, after convincing myself I liked hilly bike courses and would take a gamble on a first year event.
My ironmani.
In looking at my daily mile stats from September to now, I’ve run, biked, and swam a ton! Even though my official training didn’t start until May, the ironman was always in the back of my mind. I’m pretty impressed with these numbers, because getting in that much cycling and swimming for me is a big deal.
 
Swimming – 137 miles
Cycling – 2,786 miles
Running – 1,347 miles
 
And because I was feeling extra number geeky today, I counted up the hours I’ve spent specifically training for Ironman Chattanooga, starting in May (20 weeks, not counting this one). In total, I’ve trained 221 hours. This puts me at an average of 11 hours per week. Do I think I should have done more? Nope. I honestly feel as though I did the best I could with working full time, balancing a life, and getting in as much training as I could. I’m going into this race feeling as though I did the very best I could. I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I’d train differently in the future IF (notice that “if” is very large) I ever decided to go after another full ironman.
 
I’m really excited for this weekend and this is probably my last post until my race report. If you want to track me, I’m number 912. I cannot thank everyone enough for the support and cheers along the way. It’s been a long training cycle and I’m thrilled to be able to toe the start line on Sunday. I’m so grateful for my health and that I get to do this sport. Race day is a victory lap.
 
I leave you all with this young man that I happened to catch on Good Morning America today as I sipped my coffee. I may call him to come to the race start to get us all going. I’m going to keep smiling!