Sleep? What Sleep?

I'm lying in bed with the window open, the ceiling fan going round and round creating a nice breeze in the room. I love sleeping with the window open. My wife doesn't. Too much noise, she says. You do seem to hear every cricket chirp, car drive by and dog bark three blocks away. But, I still like it.

Anyway, I'm ready to doze off but I'm thinking about my swim workout at 5:30 the next morning: "long strokes", "elbows high", "swim in the tube", "got to improve my stroke", "feel the water", "I'm doing a ladder to 400 and back in my main set and a total of 2500"....okay, I'm not dozing off anymore. There's much work to be done. Too much work. Ironaman Florida is in November! 2.4 miles! Dang, why do I feel that knot in the pit of my stomach like it's pre-swim race morning? You know, everyone's standing around in their wetsuits, waiting, shifting from side-to-side. No one's saying a word but everyone has that "look" on their faces. It's a look of anxiety, fear and excitement all mixed together.

An Ironman race will do that to you. It takes on a life of its own. This one was birthed November 2, 2008, when I signed up for the 2009 race. It grows up fast, too fast. IM Florida 2009 is racing towards adolescence. After all, it is March. I'm in week 7 of my training plan for Memphis in May (an Olympic distance race in, of all places, Memphis. I know, strange). This is my training plan which will get me ready for "THE" training plan which will get me ready for "THE" race November 7, 2009. That training plan begins May 24th and by then IMFL '09 will be well into middle age! But, there's nothing wrong with that because so am I.

All that and I was just trying to doze off under the breeze and the sound of a dog barking in the distance. But there's no time for sleep even though my body craves it. IMFL '09 grows older by the day. There's much work to be done, a long way to go and a short time to get there.