Team,

Since early October you’ve been training for an Ironman. Thousands of miles swimming, biking, and running. Each workout - good, bad, or indifferent, is now money in the bank, building your capacity to complete Ironman. Base phase and build phase are behind you now.

Are you ready to do an Ironman? Almost. You could probably complete the race now - but you wouldn’t enjoy it. The base and build phase are there to get you ready for what’s next. The past is prologue - the future… the present… is the RACE PHASE. It’s the race phase that makes you ready for Ironman.

The coming weeks will be challenging, exhausting, and exhilarating. They will provide many chances for self-discovery and personal growth. They will be never-ending, yet over before you know it. Through it all, your ever-present training partner is FATIGUE. We’ll never do a 140 mile day… not even close. But you’ll do one on race day (140.6 to be exact). You get ready for that by learning to manage fatigue. You learn to push through the mental barriers that hold you back. Expect the next phase to bring new highs and new lows - often in the same workout. As your individual workouts get longer they will more and more mimic your Ironman day. Each workout is important for building your physical, mental, and emotional strength, and fine-tuning your race nutrition.

On Ironman race day - you may experience some level of discomfort (one of my favorite sayings). How you manage this level of discomfort will determine the outcome of your IM day. You can let it dictate to you what to do - or you can learn to be flexible with your race plan and dictate to it how you will manage it.

Sometimes life gets in the way of training, and we have to make choices and prioritize. Unfortunately, this time of year, you need to move your training high on the priority list. That may mean missing a party, or leaving one early. Your friends and family will understand. They will still love you, and will still be there when you’ve crossed the finish line. While you do not need to complete every workout on the calendar, you do need to do most of them - especially the weekends. Many weekend workouts will be supported, so do your best to train with the team. But if you can’t make the team workout, don’t blow it off. You still need to cover the miles. And if you can’t get in all the miles, get in some. Something is better than nothing.

Those long group workouts really are what brings the team together. And it is the TEAM that is your advantage over every other athlete in the race. They’re racing alone. You’re racing with a team of over 80 athletes (North and South bay)- all wearing purple and green flames, and all committed to racing for a cure - and that is the beauty of IronTeam. Training for Ironman is a very self-centered act. Yet by joining IronTeam you’re training not just for yourself… you’re supporting your teammates, honorees, and every person who is fighting cancer. When things get tough out there, or you need an extra push to get out of bed, remember how lucky you are. Remember that your body may hurt,but it’s nothing compared to chemotherapy. You may not want to do it, but remember those out there who would give ANYTHING to be able to do what you’re doing.

In order to help answer the long list of questions growing in you’re head, we’ll be holding Mentor-group/coaches meetings. These should all happen over the next 2 weeks. The idea here is everybody brings in their 3 top concerns, and we go from there. By the end of the night, hopefully we’ve answered all your questions, and maybe some more you didn’t now you had!  If you can’t make your group’s meeting, talk to your mentor and you can attend another one. We’ll have a catch-all meeting for those who could not make any.

The race phase calendar will be out to all of you this coming weekend after our last re-commitment date.

This week is marker set week. Keep track of your times and send them to the coaches. Look to Tuesday’s Captain Message for workout details for this week.

As always, talk to your coaches for any questions, concerns, injuries, freak-outs, or whatever.. that’s why we’re here.

The race phase is here - embrace the roller-coaster.

Your coaches,

Ann, Chris, Steve and Dan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 10:26 am and is filed under IT2009 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.