At the time of writing this, I’m officially at the home stretch – 15 days until we leave for the Ironman 70.3 Muskoka Extravaganza, which means 19 days until race day… this is probably the craziest challenge I’ve decided to take on to date. With this one I have family tagging along to cheer me on – my wife making the trek up with me, and my parents and sister heading up not too far after us, and in a change of pace I even have a Canadian friend that decided to take on the challenge himself, and is participating in the event with me. I have a couple of last-minute things to get done, such as new tires on my bike, checking my patch kit to make sure I didn’t thieve anything from it like I have a habit of doing, and getting my emergency pump affixed to the frame, but we’re just about ready. The way we’ve set the trip up, I have about three days before the race to familiarize myself with the course, and maybe take an abbreviated run-through, and make sure all of my equipment feels right… Oh… and I made sure to be staying across from a Canadian Tire, and kiddie-corner to a bike shop to get anything I may need at the last minute!
The area is pseudo hilly where this race is taking place, luckily where I live and have been training isconsistently hilly as well, especially the bike routes. When we get there, I plan on driving most of the bike course to see what sort of terrain it will be, and then will take a 25k cycle along the first stretch of the route to gauge exactly what I’ll need to do.
I’ve spent a lot of my time training for running events this year knowing full well that this was upcoming, and that cycling is the meat and potatoes of this event – accounting for roughly 80% of the distance, while running only accounts for 18%, and leaving swimming hovering around 2%.
No matter how the race goes, I’m excited for it. While I have a goal time of about 5 hours, truthfully just completing it is my target. Since September I’ve completed four 5k races, three half and one full marathons, and in those distances, when I’ve reached the end of the halves, I’ve had plenty of energy left to keep going – the Full was a little bit of a different beast, but still felt pretty good… especially after a nap on the way home and some dinner a few hours later.
Fingers crossed for a good race, and making it to the finish!!
Roving On 