It’s crunch time and we can all feel it. Walking into our appartment is like entering ground zero of Ironman Training. Once you open the door, and step into the living room you are faced with our sturdy bikes, proped up on the trainers ready for the next tripple digit ride; bento boxes open, revealing a left over powerbar or perhaps some salt pills in a miniature zip lock bag. An ITB roller towers over our living room as if to warn us of the injuries to come. If you dare venture into our kitchen, it’s like you’re standing next to the discount bin in a sports nutrition shop. We have an endless array of gels, bars, pills and powders, all in place with several full refill bags underneath the table. Instead of drying pots and pans, we have Aerobotles and shakers, maybe a left over oatmeal pot from the treturous weekend that passed.

A few steps further on the left is the shower. “His & Hers” wetsuits are lying on the top of the shower curtain dripping down, drying from the morning ocean swim. It already looks used and we have a few tears to fix. Then there is THE room. THE room with everything else. A room full of our workout clothes, shoes and everything in between. A dresser that was used in the 1960′s for some ladies purfume, brush and lipstick was now home to about 7 body glides, two sports sun screen bottles and about 15 trophies. My Zipp wheels are resting on the couch (tapering for race day), another neglected mountain bike and my teleporting folding bike stand in the shadows of our serious equiptment.

The bedroom is no better. There are ice packs from the night before which we promptly return to the freezer for next time; More pills and water bottles next to our bed and a tredmill covered with drying towels and some clothes just to feel normal.

This is our life right now.

It won’t get better until we return from our Ironman and regain sanity.

We can’t think about that now though.

Now we just have to live through this week, taper right and plan our race and race like we planned.

UPDATES

I now have two 200km ride under my belt and one 5km open water swim. Tamir and I just got back from a weekend training camp. On Friday I rode 4 hours, swam 1 hour and ran 1 hour. On Saturday I rode 4 hours and ran 2 hours. On Friday Tamir swam 1 hour and ran two hours. On Saturday he rode 180 km and ran 20 minutes.

We are BEAT!

Raanan – People in Zone 3 smile sometimes. We just have to do it in secret so that a certain someone doesn’t see. Then we can pretend that the sun is in our eyes if we get caught. It will be worth it when I’m not throwing up during the marathon. You wait and see

As for the future – This week was tough and I’m planning an 8 hour sleeping night, needless to say “woo hoo”. Tomorrow morning I have an ocean swim with Mor, my spiritual zone 3 leader and a 2 hour run in the evening. Friday is a short 4 hour ride and saturday is a super duper double brick (say that ten times fast).  In English that translates to 85km ride, then 17km run, then 51km ride, then 8km run.

Tamir and I are in London for the 3rd wheel exclusive training camp. Raanan forgot to submit his application for the camp and therefor won’t be joining us. Raanan, you will be missed. I’ve been in London since Monday (just running & working) and Tamir arrived last night. The camp is all inclusive for 3rd wheel members and sponsored by 3rd wheel & “co.” (mainly the “co.” ). The main event is a long run by the Thames lasting around 2 hours on Saturday. Attractions will include us (duh)… and maybe a few sights on the riverfront (like the ferris wheel, etc). We are going to bring our trusty flip to document our London run so take a dramamine and get ready (it might be a bit shaky). Other than that, I had the pleasure of running with the Barclays Capital track club. We ran from the Barcap building in Canary Wharf over to a local track. It was a bit drizzly but we managed to start and soon enough the rain was over. I arrived quite confident that I was fast; after all, I did finish a whole marathon. Very quickly, I realized that I am ( for lack of a better term ) a “slow poke”. Our workout was 200m,400m,600m,800m,1000m,1000m,800m,600m,400m,200m with 60 second breaks after short sets and 90 second breaks after long sets. Granted I ran 50 minutes in the morning as well, but this workout was freakin’ hard!! After every set my pulse was around 192 and by the time I got started again it wasn’t that much less. The conclusion from this painful experience is that it’s time to start doing some track work. My muscles were sore the next day… Cheers!