It's ten days until race day. How do I feel? Ready.
This morning I woke up at 6:30am sans alarm, which has become the norm, and other than the knot of pain in my right shoulderblade, the most noticeable thing was that I was awake. Fully awake. Not the I'd-like-to-sleep-another-two-hours kind of awake, but the first-day-of-vacation, snowday-from-school, body-twitching-to-move kind of awake. And I was hungry.
The knotted muscle in the shoulderblade was caused by an last night's extended swim. The swim was not necessarily extended by choice, but because this was my first swim in an indoor pool this season -- a pool incidentally half the length of the monstrosity I'm accustomed to -- it was ten times more difficult to keep count of my laps. I really have no idea how much I swam, but the knot in my shoulder and the general cramped feeling of my back lead me to believe it was further than usual.
I now understand how lucky I had it all summer. Compared to the Chelsea mini-pool (25m, ha), the Hamilton Fish pool is luxury, regardless of the webs of hair crawling through the water and the littering of scrunchies and hair ties on its bottom. I'll miss you Hamilton Fish.
I sat on my couch at 7am with cereal bowl palmed watching the hostage footage from Chechnya. I get choked up at news footage sometimes now. I don't remember ever doing that in my 20's. It was that little boy sitting with his legs crossed, black shorts, black shoes, white collared shirt watching gunmen rig bombs. It was the father carrying his son back to the scene and the boy giving a flat account of where he's last seen another boy to the missing boy's father. This is how the news wants me to feel.
I had packed my biking gear the night before but the rain saved me a trip to Central Park. How sweet the rain sounded this morning.
I was on the bike at the gym at 7:30am catching up on my subscription of Shape magazine. Thankfully I am fully dispelled of workout myths (you can go swimming immediately after you eat, the scale should budge when you're working out even though muscle weighs more than fat and the Atkins diet is bad for you). I finished 20 miles within an hour and was able to walk off of the bike. The damned knot did not go away.
But overall, I'm ready for this triathlon. My body is more tired than usual. I feel the fatigue in my legs going up stairs, I fall into deep sleeps when I'm certain I won't be able to fall asleep and I don't have a six-pack but my beltline doesn't make me cringe. And I thought I'd never say this, but (gulp), [john kerry]bring it on.[/john kerry]
