#iwatchtheworldoutside

But no fries??

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I really, really want to ignore the question from @perpetuallykelsey (or at least deflect it with humor), but I’ll answer it seriously. The simple answer is: No. I have not.

I signed up for two open water events. The first one I announced publicly amd then wrote about how I was disappointed in myself for chickening out. The second one I kept to myself (embarrassed from the first time) and chickened out again. I paid 30 bucks and wasted two Saturday mornings to not open water swim.

Obviously that is not ideal. Third time is a charm? The race is going to make me face my fear. I think I need that pressure. Those random Saturday mornings, I knew the water was going to scare me. I knew my fear of people was going to be loud and obnoxious. I was alone and friendless. On those mornings I could visualize failure. I could see myself writing a post about how I ran away.

However, everything that was true on those random Saturdays is not going to be true this specific Saturday. Everything will be different. I’ll be in a race mindset; the crowd of people won’t matter. It won't be forced to put myself in the water; instead I'll be in a crowd anxiously waiting for someone to shout "Go!". The risk of failure is too high; I want that half iron; nothing will keep me from running it. And my best friend will be there. There’s no way he running onto the water without me.

So yeah. I’m 700 biking miles behind the training plan. I only completed 33% of the training plans swimming miles. I didn’t practice swimming in open water. There’s a lot of things I didn’t do. I don’t care. I’m going to show up at that start line. I’m going to swim. I’m going to bike. And then I am going to run across the finish line. Simple as that.

We can talk all day about what I didn’t do. But let’s instead talk a bit about what I did do: I consistently put up double digit training hours week after week. Sometimes these were peaked in the 20 hour range. I swam in the pool the half iron distance beating the swim cutoff time by 10 or so minutes on multiple occasions. I already did a personal half iron where I went the required distances in each event albeit with lots of breaks. I’ve ran for 8 hours at a single time so I know I can keep pushing my body forward for large chunks of time.

For these reasons, despite my short comings of training to be a triathlete, I am confident in myself. I don’t think that confidence in myself is misplaced either. It’s true, I don’t feel like a triathlete. I am simply an obstacle course ultra runner that is going to complete a triathlon event. There’s a difference there, but that’s who I am.

I apologize for turning such a seemingly simple question into some sort of personal anthem, but my thumbs kept typing away.

Everyone in my office is all about the Rangers.