Final Thoughts on IMC

• What a difference a boatload of swim technique work can make.  I'm still not where I want to be but all the yards in the world were not making a difference for me without focused, conscious change.  Every week with Tim we worked on me learning the feel for a certain bit of the stroke so that I could identify when I was doing it wrong and fix it.
• I keep reading from all the fast people that the swim course measured long.  You mean, I could have been even faster? Squeee!
• I'm quite pleased with my bike nutrition this time around (I'll do a separate post on everything I used for training/racing this year).  I stuck to my plan and had no problem continuing to eat the stuff I'd trained with all year.  I think it helped that I varied the flavors and that I really avoided using it during taper except for long rides, so I was almost craving it by race day.
• I'm SO happy we did some huge climbing days in training, even when at the time I was sure everyone hated me or this was overkill. I'm quite certain it made a huge difference on race day, because I was spinning pretty comfortably up Richter while people around me seemed to be putting a lot more effort into getting to the top and Yellow Lake didn't crush me even that late in the day.  Compared to how I felt on some of our practice rides, I ended the IMC bike feeling fairly fresh in the legs.  The same goes for all our rough days in headwind and heat...they all made race day seem easier.  To think that I did this course even a minute faster than I did AZ...well, that's a whole lot of solid bike strength I built up this summer!
• This was the first IM run I've done sockless and the first one where I haven't blistered!  Sure I had some sore spots on my toes but rubbing a ton of Aquaphor into my feet in T2 worked perfectly.
• I may have confused people a little in my race report about "retiring" from Ironman.  Some people can do IM every year back-to-back and some people do multiples in a year!  For me, this was an interesting challenge doing IMC just 9 months after IM AZ and really I signed up to do it with my brother, my closest training partner and many friends.  But I really like to vary up the distance to avoid stagnating and I think I'm still in the midst of my development as a triathlete.  So to focus more on speed - and do what quite frankly seems a whole lot more painful (sprints HURT) - I knew early on this year that I'd be spending the next couple years racing short course.  The good news is I think that means I can race a whole lot more often!  I've got a very long list of potential events for next year and will need to narrow it down with the ELF sometime this fall.
• I've been pretty good about active recovery since race day...a little swimming, a little biking, my first easy run.  What I've been doing far more of since we got back to CA though is yoga.  I met a friend for 6am bikram on Tuesday (which just reminded me there is nothing fun about standing in a hot room trying not to pass out), I tried Yoga Therapy (with triggerpoint balls and all, it was like deep tissue massage), and I went to Gentle class today (and promptly fell asleep during shavasana).  If I can't use all the workout clothes overflowing out of my dresser, I might as well use a lot of the Lululemon I've got!