Looming

Swimming test on Sunday! I hope to meet Dan in the pool tomorrow morning, he has great legs. So a thorough workout tomorrow morning in the pool should allow me to then have enough time to recover before showing how wonderful I am to the coach. Am I nervous? No. Yes. A bit. I meet minimum standards well enough so I shouldn't be but I'm starting to put the pressure on myself and increase the work rate when beasting. The event in the distance looms. Not in the way that Mount Doom would have entered the thoughts of Frodo as he left Rivendel. Nor in the way the battle of Mons would have played on the mind of John Parr as he enlisted into a bicycle recce unit. Perhaps it is more akin to pregnancy. A jolly good lark to get involved, a blissful start, sudden realisation, sickness and pain in early stages settling down into some hard work interspersed with normal life then an increasing awakening to the impending pain of the moment tempered only by the knowledge of the eternal joy of the successful completion of that trial. No nappies involved afterwards though. Perhaps I could extend the metaphor by discussing the feeling of never wanting to repeat the experience directly afterwards followed by the species saving numbing of memory that makes one think "it wasn't THAT bad...". I haven't done an Ironman yet though so I don't know if that will be the same. Maybe I'll have a wetsuit malfunction and never get further than appearing naked from the water long after the cut off for transition. No I won't. I'm not negative at all. 12 hours of pain (fun) and life of smugness to look forward to. Should I get the IM tattoo?