Ironman 70.3 - The Perfect Storm

Should you do a race if you're not fully prepared for it? Well, that depends!

• How long have you been training for for this race?

• Do you have any injuries? If so, how bad are they?

• How are you feeling about the race mentally?

Well, I was in that boat a couple weeks ago when I got injured about 3 weeks before my race. I asked myself those three questions, over, and over again. Truthfully, I kept asking those questions up until race day and didn't decide on what I'm going to do until I was in the transition area after my 56 mile bike ride. After thinking about those questions for all those weeks, it took me about 2 seconds to decide that I'm going to just run and finish the race one mile at a time.

If you've trained for any race, you know how much effort goes into it. Early morning or late nigh workouts. Plenty of times when you just wanted to skip it or quit but your mind didn't fully let you. We put weeks and months into getting ready for a race so when a hiccup such as an injury happens, we think of all the possibilities and outcomes and whether or not we should push through it. No one knows our bodies better than ourselves. If you have months of training under your belt and a few weeks before an injury happens, will it skew your race plan? Absooooolutely! But does that mean you should just give up all together? Absooooolutely not! See what your options are (such as seeing a doctor if you're really in pain), or just give yourself a few days of rest to see what happens. Most importantly, listen to your body and don't over do it. A few days or easy weeks might just do the trick to get you through race day. But let's be honest, if your doctor tells you not to do it then you should probably listen :).

Well, in those 2 seconds when I decided that I'm going to go for it and run, it was all mental for those 13.1 miles. Your mind can get you through things when your body is screaming at you to stop. It was painful, long and a lot of grunting, but I did it. I knew I had the endurance, the only thing I didn't have was power and speed (or legs at that point). Once I fully accepted that, I figured why not go for it. I did promise myself that if things got bad and I was really in pain, I would stop. Thankfully, I finished and will definitely remember this race for a loooong time. For now, I'll just focus on strength training so I don't run into the same problems on my next training phase.