Inspiration by Anticipation

Okay, I'm back.   It's been a long time and this post was supposed to be from the Broken Elbow but life is full of surprises.  Case in point-this morning was going to be all about lounging with coffee and a magazine, but no.  Inspiration started poking at me and couldn't/wouldn't be ignored (thankfully!).

What's got me inspired?  Anticipation.  In roughly 24 hours, I will be crossing the finish line at the Subaru Vancouver Triathlon.  This will be the first race post Elbow Incident and I fully expected this countdown to be like every other race:  anxiety, nerves gnawing at me, telling myself that this is ridiculous, you are not meant to be an athlete, go home.  But this one is different.  This time I'm ready and psyched.

Ready for my first open water swim since Lavaman and my first in Canada.  This week's open water practice (thanks Coach T!) was a great start for someone who had never swam in a wetsuit or open water in the Great White North, at least in the triathlon sense.  I expected cold as hell, seaweed, giant waves and monsters and instead got tolerable temperatures, little seaweed, gentle rollers and the only monster was some threatened motion sickness.  I'm ready to be Germany to the ocean's Brazil.  I'm psyched.

Ready to attack the bike course like never before because I've trained like never before, thanks to Alli and the Nutcracker and all those 6am weekend wake-up calls.  Truthfully, the one hill of the course has me a little bit worried but more for the down than the up.  I love to climb, but am a little worried about the downhill that should have me going 50+ kilometres/hour!  If you're looking for me, I'll be the one white knuckling my brakes.  Still pretty psyched!

Ready to run.  Ready because I've been training hard for the run, mostly thanks to my Nike + app on my phone keeping me inspired.  It's so nice to have crossed the line from complete and utter loathing of running back to loving it, because it's hard to do triathlon without a good, strong run (walking the whole 5km would look silly, wouldn't it?).  Psyched to run across that finish line tomorrow for the first time in over a year!

Tomorrow is going to be great.  Beautiful weather, an awesome course and hopefully a PR are all just a  day away!   Check back Monday for my race report and see you out there!