Mooseman is my last race before the Ironman and is the third to last heavy training weekend before the five week taper starts. I'm ready to taper - I'm tired and feeling every little twinge and ache.
Although I haven't been feeling the love this week - at least on the training front - I am starting to get excited about the weekend. It's the 'A' race for a lot of Team Zers and so the full TZ circus will be deployed, including giant shelter tents, about a million camp chairs and the custom built grill that will produce eggs made to order, bacon, pancakes, hamburgers, hot dogs and coffee pretty much 12 hours a day for the next three days. D-Day wasn't as well planned and executed as a Team Z race weekend.
Mark and I will be sharing a house on Newfound Lake with a bunch of teammates and are looking forward to the sorts of laughs you get when you throw strangers and friends together in a house with intense activity and lots of food and alcohol.
Mooseman is actually two races - an Olympic disance tri on Saturday and double that distance - a half Ironman - on Sunday. I'm doing the half and Mark's cycling and running in a relay for the half. This is the first time we've ever raced the same multisport event. It'll be really fun to be able to compare notes afyerwards.
Mooseman is such a fun race. The race director infuses the weekend with so much personality - home made icecream, a "devil" on the steepest hill, a man dressed in the biggest boobs you ever did see, great events for kids and the coolest medals in the business (featuring a moose, natch).
I've done this race twice before. Three years ago it was my first half Ironman. I trained hard for six months through some of the toughest times I'd ever faced in my career when, for a variety of reasons (most good!) 60% of my staff quit within a few weeks of each other and I had to not only do three jobs, but redesign and rebuild my team, hiring seven people in six months. Training for Mooseman kept me sane and I remember warning my staff that once the race was over and I stopped training, I'd turn into a bitch. Finishing Mooseman was such an emotional relief and high for me. I cried like a baby when I finished.
I also raced it last year when temps and humidity were both in the 90s. I came close to quitting on the first loop of the run when I got dizzy running up the hill at mile 2. The run was horrendous but I was so proud of myself for going back out on the second loop and finishing feeling strong (after running face first into the ginormous boobed man in the finishing chute and getting a great big hug). In the end, I took 14 minutes off my time because I was so much stronger on the bike. Bonus!
This year will be weird. Like my last half Ironman a few weeks ago, this is a training weekend, so my focus will be on trying to race in zone 2 and practicing my nutrition and race plans. I'm going to concentrate on having fun and relaxing. This year the race is even being broadcast live on the web and they're taping for later viewing. The race director has challenged us to ham it up in the finishing chute for a side competition, but I don't know that I'll have the courage to do that!
Travel update - entered and exited Pennsylvania and now entering the vast wasteland of civilization and self-operated gas pumps that is New Jersey.
Note to Scott and Matt - I remembered the blue bag this time! I wonder what I did leave behind?
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