Unless I am working or actively engaged in conversation about something else, my brain is fully occupied with thoughts of Wildflower. Any conversation I get in to soon turns to that topic.

“Did you hear that they are insulting each other in the Senate over the troop pull out plans?”
“I did and It reminded me of how concerned I am about my lack of training for Wildflower”

<img src=”http://www.tricalifornia.com/wildflower/2007/images/25WF_Color07.gif&#8221;.?

Seriously. It’s all Wildflower, all the time between my ears. Mostly my thoughts are good, they are just chronic. So I’d like to welcome you to my brain as I cut a virtual peep hole in my skull with this post.

1). Placing – I’ve obsessed about showing up last in on the list published in my race club’s newsletter because that would make me 3 for 3 coming in last. But it won’t! In this last newsletter I ended up second to last but with AG/4 next to my name and I just beamed with pride. The pressure not to be last is off!

2). Swim – My masters swim team had no practice on Monday because the coaches and much of the team were recovering from the Pacific Masters Championship meet so I took the opportunity to do a 1000 yard time trial. I didn’t swim that hard and managed to cover the distance in 20:55. So if no one kicks my goggles off, if I don’t panic in the water, if I don’t veer off course IF THE GOOD LORD’S WILLING AND THE CREEK DON’T RISE, I’ll be out of the water in 30 minutes. I feel good about that.

3). Tapering – eek! It’s taper time – right when I was warming up to train. Drat! I was talking to someone in the locker room at swimming on Monday about my training and saying I was planning on doing a brick this weekend to simulate the actual race and she said, “Oh no – you should be tapering”. I explained that I was under trained and she said it didn’t matter – I needed to rest. Then she said, “My best Ironman races were when I had been sick for a couple of weeks before”. I, of course had to ask how many Ironman races she had done. “26. 10 in Kona”. Whoa. If that woman says taper, who am I to argue? I’m tapering. I will still do a little brick this weekend but I won’t spend more than 30 minutes on either the bike or the run.

4). Butt munch – Tuesday I spoke with another woman in the locker room (did I mention I’m obsessed??) about how I still hurt from my 45 mile ride on Saturday and how that just isn’t right. I said I thought I needed a new seat and she just shook her head. “You don’t want to change anything right before a race. You’d hate to have a sore nu nu half way though the event”. Nu Nu is my new favorite word. This saddle sore is a drag, though and it isn’t normal and I realized finally that I was sore in a particular spot on one side and that it is from dropping my bike (finally got THAT out of the way) and having the pointy part of the saddle jam me in my lower, inside, right buttock. It was such a hard hit that the seat was crooked when I picked up the bike. Owie. I do need a new seat but I will wait because other than that pain I’m okay.

5). Wetsuit – I had a blinding flash of insight the other day that about 1/2 my bad mood about Wildflower had to do with the fact that I still needed to go get fitted for a rental wetsuit and I just didn’t want to do it. I have really, really bad body image and the thought of squeezing my pudgy hindquarter into a wetsuit was bumming me out. I figured I would need a large and it would be totally humiliating. It wasn’t. I will be wearing a QR Superfull size small. I didn’t have much trouble getting in to it (except for the part where I put my foot in the wrong leg to start and got the whole thing twisted around) but I had a hellish time getting it off. If that is representative of how it will be in the race, T1 will be about 22 minutes. I need to work on that or make sure I have a wetsuit stripper lined up.

6). s’mores – The only thing I really like about camping is s’mores and I so wanted to sit around the campfire with my fellow bloggers, toasting marshmallows and squeezing their burnt outer crusts and sweet gooey innards between 2 pieces of chocolate and a couple of graham cracker squares. And then I had a sad realization. The Long Course peeps are not going to want to eat them Friday night and I certainly don’t want to eat them Saturday night. Houston, we have a problem. Unless we can all agree to a late Sunday Brunch of s’mores it just isn’t going to happen. *sniff sniff* I can be coerced into singing campfire songs, though and having spent 14 summers at Family Camp I know a couple.

7). I can hardly wait to meet you all. I’m not sure how we’ll find each other because this place is quite large. I did some looking around and my club camps in the Redondo Vista area as shown on this map (although not in exactly that spot). If you have any idea where you will be please let me know. Maybe we can all agree to end up at the raceAthlete RV city at some point. Regardless of planning or lack thereof I WILL find you – I must.