Ironman Dreaming

 

 Ironman Dreaming: Plus 3½ hours session Turbo Training

 Last night was a better night for me and I felt better for that this morning. Ready to face another long Sunday morning training with my husband/coach Stephen. Similar to last Sunday Steve had planned some exciting Winter sports to keep our legs spinning around for a rather long time for a pair of old timers like ourselves. He had recorded the 2-man bob from yesterday and we had taken care not to look at the results, so that nothing was taken from the tension of the event. Later we watched the 4-man bob event live from Innsbruck. We had been there to watch this World Cup event on previous years. Our GBR teams finished 8^th and 11^th in the 4-man event and would have done even better with us shouting at them for sure!!!!! We were still shouting at them at home today but they could not hear or feel our enthusiasm. We cycled for pretty near 3½ hours this morning. 

 

Between events, Steve found some cross-country skiing for us to watch and we had a peek at the news too. While we were not watching anything in particular in between whiles I told Steve that it was a wonder I felt like doing this long session because I had been racing all night in my dreams! Maybe, or more than likely the cause was that I knew what was coming this morning and my mind was on the sport that we hope we will be able to enjoy again soon, if not soon, it may start to be too late for me, since I have already lost all of last years many events. I just hope that with the long delay between racing that I have not lost anything form wise, or worse still my confidence, though I hope not.

 

In my dream, I was competing in a full Ironman event. It was a bit confusing at first and I was not sure which race it could have been. In my many years as a triathlete I have competed in 18 races that were Ironman or Ironman distance. The swim in my dream, could have been either Lanzarote which is breath-taking as it is beautiful with the millions of dazzling coloured fish but as I swam, I though sometimes that I was in Elsinore, Denmark and then again, it seemed to change to the more challenging swim in Hawaii which is no wetsuit and also in rather deep water. As I swam, I relived a moment when a dolphin had swooped diagonally underneath me, very close and I remember that it gave me something of a start and my heart jumped with surprise.

 

Then suddenly I was out on the bike course but his time I didn’t seem to recognise the course at all. There was very long climb close to a coast, though it didn’t make sense to me at all; how could I be out on an Ironman course that I did not recognise at all. Even if it was a new race that is entered, I would have still have gone out and driven the route or ridden some of it on my bike. This time it was completely strange and on thinking about it today, I can only think that I was thinking about the races I hope to be able to do this year, maybe Graz in Austria or Poreč in Croatia, or Zell am Zee in Austria at the end of summer. It could not have been the Venice-Jessolo race because that is pretty flat. This bike course climbed and climbed and climbed some more and I could see the writhing snake like road twisting and turning ahead, yet clear as clear as I rode on. The other strange thing was that looking down to my right side there was the deepest blue sea below. It was most confusing and yet I thought it might be in a Scandinavian country, maybe Sweden of perhaps Norway. 

 

 All the time I was trying to just concentrate on my riding but it was so mysterious, how did I get there even? I was mesmerised by the dark sea below the road and knew that it could not be the Hawaii World Ironman Championships because the Ocean would have been on my left side during the climb and my right side only after the turnaround at Hawi. I tried to check this in my mind because I has competed in the Hawaii race three times and on one occasion as my mind recalled, the movie Waterworld starring Kevin Costner was being filmed there and all the way up that long climb I could see the Atoll where a lot of the movie took place. I was certain the atoll was easy to see on the right side on the way up and on the left not far out from the coast on the return downhill, where it could be very windy, so you still had to be careful even in a long descent like that. Lanzarote also has a number of climbs and on one you can sea the ocean below but again it would have been on the wrong side of me. Ironman Austria has a lake on the right-hand side after a big climb but much further away.

 

I woke up before ever going out on the bike ride which was just as well because I would have been totally whacked if I had. I can’t believe that I didn’t wake Steve because I couldn’t have dreamed all that without some movement surely.

 

At the end of the Hawaii race, when they were making Waterworld, Kevin Costner was watching at the finish line at the end of my very long day when I finished shortly before midnight. None of my Ironman races have been early finishers. My time would be almost double that of the first rush of elite athletes finishes. Most of them were finishing as I went out to start my run. I remember in our early days that we did and iron distance race, not Ironman corporation. It was called The Longest Day run by Black Country Events and it was I think my fastest ever time for the distance 14.15.37 compared to most others that were nearly always 16 hours something. When I got to the finish line the race winner Chris Ray, who was a Royal Marine, was at the finish line to see me in and give me my medal. He said that he didn’t know how I did it, when he had raced as fast as he could for eight hours and had only been out there about half the time that I was racing as fast as I could. That was the nicest thing anybody ever said to me about one of my races. It was nice that he appreciated that it was still an almighty effort. 

This photo below is a really aweful photo of a photo in a frame, but it is at The Longest Day race.