34 Days...

I have been a blog slacker and haven't written for awhile. Part I have been private, part lazy, part guilty and feeling like I needed to update this will EVERYTHING I had been doing to do justice to the blog world. Finally I had to say screw it and just get going again. And with less than 7 weeks to go, it is about time.

We are leaving on our "Not Road Trip 2009" tomorrow to spend some time in Regina and I will get to Duluth to see family as well. Of course there will be some training along the way. Tomorrow will be another stop to swim in Okanagan Lake and then Wednesday I will be doing the second half of the Ironman course, the ugly section from Osoyoos back up to Penticton. I have climbed Richter Pass a couple times before, but I have yet to ride the Yellow Lake climb which I have heard can be pretty ugly. Nothing like throwing another mountain at you after 140k on the bike. It shouldn't be too bad this week since I am skipping a bit, but I want to know what I am getting myself into before the big day. I will be back in two weeks to do the whole thing. I am so excited to climb the pass and also pretty fired up to see what the downhill is like on the other side. I have heard people get up to 90kph/55mph....white knuckles here I come!

Training has been going fairly well as of late. Great swimming, good biking and I am finally getting over a knee/IT Band funk that happened a couple weeks back. I have been attacking it with physio (Rob Hasagawa is a god!), massage therapy (Ian and Cook St. something or other is also pretty damn impressive), and I have a new daily routine of stretches and moves to keep everything rocking and in the right place. So far so good. A week ago I couldn't run 15 minutes without a bit of pain; yesterday was up to an hour so we are doing something right.

All in all I have been learning some very valuable lessons in nutrition (gotta feed the machine regularly to keep it running), pacing (I am now realizing I want to finish the marathon section strong. I had been planning for the swim, realizing what the bike would take, and then just hoping I would have the strength to finish the run. Bad plan. I have re framed it all so that the last grain of sand falls through the hourglass hopefully nearer the finish line and less at the halfway point of the marathon.) and fun (everyone I talk to says "Remember to have fun!" as advice to a first timer. I am a pretty up person anyway so this could be quite the epic day!).

Thanks to all of you on the support crew and especially to all of you who I have been neglecting with phone calls, emails, and most other forms of communication. Just because I haven't contacted you doesn't mean I am not thinking of you often...these rides are nearing 6 hours long, that's a long time to think and all of you get some air time on the "Georgesen's mental riding Rolodex".

Please drop me a line during the next couple weeks. I am looking for as many of the "Wow, I am so excited for you. You are going to do soooo well!" types and less of the "Holy Sh*# man I can't believe you are doing this! Good luck out there and don't die" type. As much as I appreciate the concern for my continued existence on the planet, the freakishly positive confident "of course you are going to rock it" support goes much further!

34 days.... off to Penticton in the morning!