In July 2015 I raced the NYC Triathlon for the first time – an olympic distance race. It was dangerously hot the whole morning and after slogging through really hard conditions for almost three hours, I remember being wiped the entire next week. I was hungry and tired and totally depleted for days.

This May I raced the Mountains to Beach Marathon running from Ojai to Ventura, California, scoring my first Boston qualification after years of working for it. I couldn’t run for over a week after and in fact ended up taking five weeks off running when I started to develop another stress fracture in the wake of that effort. Again, depleted for days and on the mend for weeks.

Massive physical endeavors take an incredible and unexpected amount out of our bodies. I’m shocked every year by how long it can take to bounce back from a big day of swimming, biking, and/or running. Training for Ironman Chattanooga the past few months has meant the kind of work that has previously left me sidelined (and starving) for days every single week.

Every weekday morning the alarm goes off at 5:15 (depending on where I’m going sometimes 5:20 or 5:23 even – I’ve got my pre-workout routine timed down to the second) and every Saturday and Sunday it goes off at 5:45 or 6 at the latest to announce somewhere between five and seven hours of work.  There have been weeks on end working out in conditions hotter than NYC ever got. And so many miles heaped upon bones and muscles making a morning spent on just a marathon seem like an easy day.

With weekends that put previous race day efforts to shame for their sheer duration and mileage now the norm, every week I feel worn down in a way I used to only feel a couple times a season. I’m starving. All the time. Right now included. Despite eating my weight in Thai food earlier, followed by three face-sized chocolate chip cookies. (And half a bottle of rosé.)

And I just want to sleep. Past 6am. Anywhere. Any time. Right now most definitely included. (Definitely right now. I don’t want to keep watching my Trojans as they are throttled in the first game of the season. Plus I’m currently draped in large sleeping dogs who seem to really have the right idea.)

Some days have been objectively enjoyable with beautiful backdrops, good company, and a capable body that makes me feel powerful. Most days though – at least most long weekend days – have been really hard. Physical and mental tests.

Today I rode 85 miles in miserable wind that has literally made its way inland from a hurricane off the coast of Maryland. I rode most of it alone meeting up with Chris every so often and mentally bargaining the whole way, trying to convince myself that it’d be ok to quit early because the wind is bad and even dangerous and I was sick yesterday so maybe I shouldn’t even be out at all and my legs were tired even when I started and wouldn’t it be better to just let them rest and recover and 65, 70, 75 miles are totally respectable distances. I think this mental repartee is as crucial to training as the physical miles: it’s very easy to convince yourself to let yourself off the hook during a training day – creating the headspace and strength to power through when there’s no one really holding you accountable makes you that much stronger when things inevitably get dark come race day.

So today hurt. I yelled at the wind out loud without shame, (mucho expletives) as I’ve been known to do. I yelled at a couple people who were riding or running on the narrow W&OD trail like total a-holes. (Share the road, folks! And when I yell, “on your left” that is not a cue for you to move left!) I let myself wallow in the grumpiness but tried to remind myself too that this is all my choice; and how lucky I am to have that choice, to be physically and fiscally sound enough to do this with my time.

And while I was in real and perceived anguish the whole ride, I got it done. I didn’t let lazy Liz convince resolved Liz to throw up her hands a minute or mile early. (Of course I didn’t – I’m nowhere near solid enough to be riding with no hands! [I’m working on it, Josh!])

Now I’m exhausted, and I’m literally considering ordering a pizza at 11pm. But I finished those 85 miles thinking, yeah my legs and my head could do 31 more. And I finished five run miles thinking I could do that four more times. And I’m walking just fine. And tomorrow I’ll get up and strength train and swim. And Monday I’ll get up and run many more miles. And swim again. (And Tuesday I’ll be back at work spending my lunch reading Ironman race reports, crying as each author describes that moment of crossing the finish line, hearing their name called in the culmination of all their painful [totally optional] work.) This insane, stupid, ill-advised, masochistic, selfish, marriage-jeopardizing, expensive, privileged, sometimes-enjoyable journey has been such a gift. And whether I finish or not it’s almost done.

So all this rambling is to say thank you to my friends, family, husband, dogs, and my own body for all of this. I feel like every muscle has been marinated in lactic acid and then wrung through a meat grinder, but I’m still walking. I’m surviving mostly unscathed the kind of work that has taken me out in years past and even when I’m at my most miserable I’m totally in awe of this progress.

In 2013 I did my first half Ironman in Augusta, Georgia, and I couldn’t walk for days. Or shower without squealing in pain from the many unfortunate places I’d chafed raw. This year I raced 70.3 in the Poconos without much thought, and walked away relatively unscathed. I even taught spin the next day and ran the day after that without issue. I don’t expect to be in such good shape after Chattanooga (I’d be disappointed if I were) but I can see and feel how far I’ve come and I’m almost over that finish line. Thank you to everyone – ankles included- who’s joined me on this journey. I’ll be less sleep-deprived and calorie-insolvent soon!

*Post obviously written Saturday night post ride-run brick. Opted to publish Sunday once the rosé haze had subsided…