The J-months are upon us. We hit the month of June. June leads to July. The ironman is on July 24. It’s amazing how 7 weeks feels like such a short amount of time when you have been thinking about an event and training for it for so many months. The other night I woke up in a panic — my first real ironman nightmare was playing out in my mind. It was race morning. I was casually sitting around with some triathlete friends, when it finally struck me that the race that I had spent the whole year training for was about to start.  At that point I realized my Garmin was almost dead, I hadn’t checked in my bike and I hadn’t packed my gear bags. And everyone was heading down to the water to get ready to start the swim. I found myself madly racing around — plugging in my watch to try to give it a bit more juice; stuffing my gear bags with socks, gels, bars, shoes, anything that remotely resembled a triathlon product; and then slinging my gear bags over my shoulder and racing over to the bike check in, just as I heard that gun go off signifying the start of the race. “NOOO!!!!” I exclaimed and shot out of bed. I knew it couldn’t be true. Me. The one who fills her water bottles and lays out her nutrition the night before a ride. The one who wakes up 3 minutes before her alarm goes off almost every day. The one who arrives to a race 2 hours before the start.   The one who is never late to anything. And here I am dreaming that I am late to the race I have been thinking about and training for the last 9 months of my life.

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