Hello Folks.  If you don’t enjoy whiney kvetching, feel free to pass over this.  If you want to commiserate, please read on.

Today marks 9 weeks until my Ironman.  Commence freaking out.  For the most part, I’ve been getting in all my shorter weekday runs, much of the swimming, and all of my biking (long and otherwise).  But oh, those long runs.  I CAN. NOT. for the life of me get them in.  It’s funny because I remember the same thing from last summer.  I would do 8 in the morning and 8 in the evening because I just couldn’t do 16.  And, with last summer’s half ironman training and just one piecemeal 18-miler (i.e. split into two runs in one day), one solid 16 miler, and a few shaky 12 milers, I rocked out the Chicago Marathon at BQ pace in the fall.  A big part of this was the weather differential.  The race: 32degrees and dry.  Perfection.  The training: 98 degrees and 99% humidity. Hell.

No really.  I live. in. HELL.  I know that the whole eastern seaboard has been hot lately.  But, folks, I lost count of the 100+ degree days that we’ve had here since April.  And when things go badly at work, a coworker and I joke that we’ve surely died and gone to hell.  And it explains everything.  The heat.  The life crap.  Then we morbidly try to figure out what we did to land ourselves in Hell.  (So many choices, really.  In my life.  Makes me want to straighten up and fly right.  Next week.)  I surely didn’t expect hell to be so humid.  But, what do I know.

But that’s an aside.  To say it’s flipping miserable here.  In the morning, there is, no joke always a humidity level of over 90-95%.  Which makes running in 80 degree weather feel like 95 degree weather.  And what’s worse is that your sweat doesn’t evaporate.  It just sits.  And you continue to sweat.  And after a 50 minute run, your fingers have pruned up.  Your clothing is sopping wet.  And you look like you just went running through a downpour.  Last summer, when I ran in the morning, I would have to go by my house every hour or so to change socks and my sopping wet clothing…because it chaffed and gave me blisters.

See.

Sopping wet.

And yesterday, I had a 2:05 long run.  And, I’ve been slacking on all my long runs, so I think the longest run I’ve gotten in since beginning serious IM training is 8 miles.  Maybe 9.  Maybe 15.  But still.  I’m half-assing my long running.  Because it sucks.  And I’m slow now.

You know my long runs from ING GA Marathon training?  Those 20milers when I avged 8:10/mi?  Yea.  I can barely avg 9:00/mi for 5 miles now.

And then I come home and pass out from heat exhaustion.

Today, though, I only made it a measly 8 miles before I came home to change into drier clothes and get water.  And I sat down to stretch a second.  And I never got back up.  This has happened before.  Like a bagillion times.  I get half way through a long run and flake.  Part of it is the weather.  Part of it is that I suck.

The whole point of this post is to kvetch some.  And then be done kvetching about the weather.  And man up. The weather sucks.  But I knew the weather for training would suck when I registered for a fall Ironman.  And all this hard miserable training will make racing in the (hopefully) cool fall Wisconsin weather seem wonderfully easy.

From today on, I will man up.  All workouts finished.  Everything done well.  Time to HTFU.

Kvetch over.  Xoxo.

9 weeks left to gut it out.