Paranoid

I forgot one aspect of being this close to an Ironman race: the paranoia. I was reminded of this this morning while finishing up my long run when I ran into Chuck, who was biking back from the outdoor pool. I know Chuck from the Y, and he's also transitioned to swimming at the outdoor pool. He's a really good swimmer, and he's done Ironman before, so he can relate to all my madness (he knows I'm doing IMLP soon). I was telling Chuck about how clumsy and spastic I am and he brought up the paranoia. Yep--paranoid you will get injured, paranoid you'll forget something, paranoid people think weird things about you (well they probably DO in my case but I don't care), paranoid someone's watching you and thinking you're a slacker, and so on.

I went to Waterfall Glen to run today, and it was 70 with 97% humidity when I started. I.e., it was fucking humid. Not only that, but the bugs were out in full force. I had either some sort of bee or fly circling my head the entire time I was in there. I ran to Mile 5 and back, and when I got down in the hole, I got bit up something fierce, which made me decide that when I got back to my car to reload Coke, I would just drive home and finish from my house.

When I was almost home, I saw Jamie running on my street with no shirt. Before I knew it was him, I was thinking, "how nice a good looking fit naked runner in my hood." I stopped to briefly chat with him and asked if he had seen my house and he had. He was pretty dripping with sweat, as was I, and I headed back to get ready to continue.

I basically dumped stuff in the house, grabbed a small bottle of Gatorade, changed running shoes (the ones I was wearing were bugging me for some reason today--probably part of the paranoia), and headed out. I was about 1.5 miles from home when I saw Chuck, and since neither of us seemed to be in any big hurry, we chatted for awhile.

I ended up running 14.23 miles in 2:08.50, good for 9:03/mile, not bad. My right hand is totally swollen from a direct hit by a mosquito right in one of the big veins. It looks like the hand of a chubster--my knuckles are gone, you can't see the bones or veins, either. I was wearing a visor, and got bit on my head, too, but this stuff will go away by the end of the day.

I am going to do a strength workout, just to bump up my training totals for the last 7 days, which I'm calling my "big block," so that it's the most training I've ever done in a 7-day period! All I have to do is get to 24 hours. Do I need to? No. Will it hurt me? No. All I have to do tomorrow is swim and pack to head up to Madison!