How do I know I'm ready?

With less than 1 week to go there is not much more that can be done to improve fitness without adding fatigue on race day. But in the past several weeks I've had a few opportunities to gauge my fitness and most indicators say that I'm ready. Just 2 days after the epic long day, I raced in the Bolder Boulder, the world's largest 10K road race with 50,000 participants. Since we got to Boulder a little late and I basically jogged from the car to the start line as a warmup, and took the first 3 miles at tempo pace before picking it up a little, I'm pretty happy with the 36:23 time I posted, which is still the 2nd fastest 10K I have ever run. Not bad for 2 days after a 9 hour workout!

Later on that week I did a 10 mi cycling time trial. It was a pretty windy day but it was mostly a crosswind, which isn't quite as bad as a headwind/tailwind combo on an out and back course. Anyway, I came in at 26.3 mph which is 1 mph faster than my best from last summer. Although the wind conditions can impact that a lot, I was also less than 2 minutes off the winning time and only a minute behind a lot of cat1/2 cyclists with all sorts of aero equipment, so I was pretty happy with that result too.

Moving on, 2 weekends ago I did one final race simulation to see what biking for 5+ hours hard would feel like after a long swim, and what running 13.1 miles would feel like after that. So after vortex masters, I did quite possibly the hilliest ride that can be done in and around Fort Collins. Start by going up Rist Canyon, a 9 mile climb of about 3000 feet. Then, decsend down the Poudre Canyon, turn ride, head up over the dams (5 climbs of 200-400 ft each), and climb the back side of Rist from Masonville (another ~3000 ft w/ several steep sections, including the last mile at about 12%). Although this was only a 93 mile ride, the point was to trash my legs at least as much as the relatively flatter ironman course will, while practicing my race nutrition strategy. After this ride, I went off to do a 13.1 mi run, which I managed to do on pace for a 3:15 marathon. Although this was definitely hard, and I needed more water than the 1 fountain I was able to stop at on this run, nothing seemed to indicate that this type of pace was not doable on race day, so hopefully all will work out.

As a final test, I raced a stroke and stride (1500m swim + 5k run) last Thursday as a final tune-up. The swim was about 2-3 minutes slower than what I was expecting, but I was also only 2-3 minutes off some ITU junior team guys that I know can swim in the 17-18 minute range, and just 30 seconds behind my coach who was the top female amateur at Ironman Hawaii last year coming out of the water. Whether it was the choppy water or a long course, I don't know, but I'm not too worried about the time given my relative place. On the run, though, I managed to run down a few of those ITU junior team guys and ran basically as fast as I ever have for 5K, not bad for no speedwork and coming off a hard swim. That's how I know I'm ready.

Well, only a couple days before I make the trip up to Idaho. I plan to get in 1 more post about lessons learned from my training for this, and detail some of my final prep, so keep checking back for more!