The afternoon before my first ironman effort finds me surprisingly relaxed. Maybe it is the fact that the weather forecast anticipates wonderfully benign conditions - cool cloudy weather and reasonably calm water. Or maybe it is the fact that my teammates here have more legitimate concerns than I do - Stu is suffering a chest cold, Kerens bike cleat broke off his bike shoe, Paul and Nakamura-san have not trained at all in the past 3 months. As inadequate as my training has been these past 3 months, at least I have done a handful of good workouts since returning from New Zealand. And I have my coffee. And I got a full nights sleep last night at the boxy Shato In Fukue -- think Chateau Inn.
A large group of us just did a protein-loading lunch at a famous Goto Beef Steak restaurant. I found this to be a strange culinary choice, but these people have done many Ironman races before, so I dutifully ate my steak. Well actually I only ate half of it, I did not want to dramatically change my diet so much immediately prior to my first Ironman.
At the orientation session last night, the race director spent half the time talking about cut off times. I found this a bit disturbing - one because it makes me nervous about missing the cutoff times myself, and two because I have become annoyed at many Japanese events with what I think is an over-emphasis on cutoff times. At NZ there was barely a mention about cutoff times.
People ask me my goal, and I really have no idea what to say. I had grown ambitious in the days and weeks before New Zealand, but after my struggle on the bike there, I think it safe to just concentrate on going out slow on the bike. Especially since the big surprise is hearing people talk about hilly the bike course is.
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