Head Games
/Before I get started, a couple quick updates: 1) Yes, I fixed the chain. I was in the wrong gearing setting to have enough room off the chain guard to fix the issue. Silly me!
2) Check out the new Fortius Racing kits! This is what I'll be wearing come race day at Ironman Arizona.
Now, I return you to today's regularly scheduled blog.
When it comes to my Ironman training, there are two questions I get asked the most:
1) Why do you do this to yourself?
2) What the hell do you think about for 2.4 miles in the water, 112 miles on the bike and 26.2 miles on the road?
Those of you who have followed me from the beginning know why I am doing this to myself.
As for what I'm thinking about for hours at a time sans iPod or training partners, it varies. I suspect I think about many of the same things you do. Work. Love. All the football games I'm missing while training.
This past Saturday, as I fought 56 miles of headwinds on the 126 Highway in Santa Clarita, I didn't think about much. Instead, I had an internal soundtrack playing in my head. Which for me, happens fairly often. It's as if I'm a mental video editor. A song comes to me, images accompany the music, and I'm inspired and entertained while being mentally transported somewhere else. My eyes are on the road and while they see the ground in front of me, they're locked onto something else. Something bigger.
This weekend, that meant more Muse. Ever since seeing the band a couple weeks ago, I can't get them out of my head. I'm literally playing my favorite songs over and over and over again in the car or if I have a spare moment to chill out.
Up in the mental jukebox this time was Map of the Problematique:
My "video" kept me engaged for hours. The narrator: Of course, the voice of the Ironman DVD specials. The scenery: Kona. The competitors: Elite pros. The drama: Weather, heat, pain, suffering, elation.
What's funny to me is that I'm nowhere to be found in this story. It doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to get through these workouts. Where I'm at in my training, 115 miles on the bike and a 30 minute run Saturday followed by 16.6 miles trail running (in heavy, wet fog leaving me soaked to the bone) and 2,300 yards in the pool today... I'll take my motivation, inspiration and entertainment any way I can get it. Even if I have to make it up myself.
Incidentally, I was further entertained on Saturday by finding the spot in Fillmore where my company's live-action trailer for Resistance 3 was filmed. Here are a couple photos of the train yard where the old train cars from the trailer are housed in a special museum. I also rode past the bridge where in the trailer you can spot a Widowmaker and a couple Grims. Fortunately, I didn't see any of the above. 
Forgive me, I was envisioning something else anyways.
33 days and counting.