11pm - Do you know where your sanity is?

I'm getting on a plane in six or seven hours to fly to Seattle to then fly to Spokane to then get in a car or a shuttle to ride for another hour in to Idaho where my race weekend will begin. A year ago I was sitting in my apartment in Long Beach, my bags weren't packed, my brain heavily in denial over where I was going and what was about to happen. I tell people at work that I'm going on vacation, but this is hardly a vacation from their perspective.

I'm leaving the state for a couple of days. I'm staying in a hotel in a resort town. I'm travelling with friends. We'll see the sights, eat good food, and enjoy each other's company. All true. It's a Holiday inn express in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a picturesque town on a lake in Idaho. I've trained the whole year with a fantastic group of athletes and we're going together to Idaho. Ironman is in our future, but that's not until Sunday. We'll drive the bike course and see the hills and the long straight aways in our future.

To be honest it'll be an experience not to be missed. I can only hope that it means as much to them as it has to me. A chance to return to a course that pushed me to test myself and my desire to get what I wanted. I don't think that I wanted any thing more in my life than to finish that course that day. Nothing was going to stand in my way, nothing was going to keep me from that finish line. I'd worked for nine months, given up my weekends, and my nights to train my body to accept distance, pain, and the joys of a hard day's work. At the end of it all it was a joy; A joy to walk through the airport. A joy to walk the expo. A joy to see my teammates on the out and back stretches as we passed one another. Training for ironman was worth every minute.

And now here I am again. Five hours from having to be in a cab on my way to the airport all over again. I feel ready. Though I'm not sure I know what that really is yet. It takes time to know what that means. I feel better than I did last year. Stronger. Leaner. Smarter. I want it just as much.

It's ok. I'll sleep tomorrow and Friday night. I'll see the things that make me happy. Wake up in a new place. Swim in a lake. Ride in the mountains. Run near a beach. It'll be a vacation. A vacation called the 2007 Ford Ironman Coeur d'Alene. An adventure. I'm ready.

G'night.
-dean