Reflections

Day Off!
What I found most interesting about yesterday was that 13.1 miles seems just as hard as 70.3. You'd think it would be way easier. But it's sort of like difference between Engineers and Physicists and the concept of being able to divide 1 inch and 10 inches into the same number of subdivisions. The real joke is that you have a two people sitting on opposite ends of a couch. The question is that if they keep halving the distance between them, will they ever reach each other? The Engineer says no, because there will also be a distance the be reduced, minute as it may be. The Physicist says that for all practical purposes, the answer is yes. I was an Engineer in school, so I'm allowed to make fun of myself.

Anyhow, it seems that regardless of the distance, your mind assigns a definitive starting and ending point. You push yourself accordingly based on the distance. When you start to reach that breaking point, depending on how close you are to your ending point, you then react accordingly to how much more you can push yourself. It seems like some of the biggest struggles are towards then end of race and the end just can't come soon enough. Had I done the rest of the race, if I started tiring on the bike, I'd likely react quite a bit differently knowing that I still had a run to do. Like at Vineman, the last 15 miles on the bike were about the worse imaginable. But there were no thoughts of "I don't know how much more of this I can take" or "I don't know if I can do this". There were no thoughts about being almost done or any of the other things that pop into my mind when I'm so close, but still seem so far. I knew there was still a run to do and I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but there was no way that I was done. My start and end point were for 70.3, not a 56 mile ride. Well, that's my official theory anyways...

Or maybe it's because I didn't really train much for this. Let me just say that my quads are killing me! Stairs are my biggest enemy right now.