Friday, September 1 (nine days to go)

With a week to go before the Ironman my training became 30 minutes of light cardio.

(Your version of “light cardio” is other people’s workouts.)

No, actually, it was jogging a 5K at a 11-minute pace or 30 minutes of spin at home or swimming a 2K in the ocean.

(My point exactly. Who calls a 2K swim “light cardio”?)

Ummm, me.

(My point exactly!)

I had all this extra time now that I was barely training.

(What did you do with yourself?)

I had to balance getting ready for the trip with getting ready to start teaching, with writing my Jewish Link column, with managing the training programs for my private athletes.

(How do you keep track of all these things?)

Every day I make a to-do list. I copy over yesterday’s list and I add anything that needs to be added. Anything that is an appointment goes in the shared calendar, so my wife Janet knows where her husband went.

The top of that list was the final tune up at the bike shop.

(Are we talking 30-minute oil change level or four-hour “remove the engine block to swap out the head gaskets” level?)

Just a last-minute check out of all systems. Brake fluid levels, brake pad thickness, oil and lube the drivetrain.

(Was this your bike … or your car?)

It was then that I received my athlete check-in information. PICTURE 2

(Your athlete what?)

This was how the Ironman race people informed me which race number I was assigned, when my start time was and when to pick up all my race materials.

(Materials? You mean like a teacher?)

In a week…

(From now?)

From then.

(When will then be now?)

This is not the movie “Spaceballs.”

Two days before the race I had to check in and get my swim cap, race bib, my bike stickers and timing chip. Without these items I was going to be spending Ironman World Championship Nice as a spectator. At the world championship amateur athletes are grouped by age, so I had to get the assigned colored swim cap. When athletes group together at the swim start by cap color it looks like piles of Lego pieces, sorted by color. The bracelet on my wrist corresponds to the race number on my bike and those stickers ensure that only I leave with my bike.

(Would someone at the World Championships steal your bike?)

I think at this level of competition there is a greater chance of accidentally taking someone else’s bike in the confusion. The timing chip was a Velcro strap around my ankle that would send updates every time I crossed a timing map on the course. I needed a valid ID and the QR code in the email.

Then I got the anti-doping letter.

(You don’t dope, do you?)

Nope, so I wasn’t worried until…

(Here it comes. Those three dots that will make us wait until next week.)

…I saw cortisone on the banned substance list.

(But you don’t take performance enhancing drugs.)

But I was applying cortisone cream for eczema and doing the twice monthly injections.

(How bad were the injections?)

I got used to it.

(That bad?)

Now all I could think was I was traveling all this way, spending all this money and if I got picked for random blood sampling, I was going to be banned from racing.

I started to do the math in my head again.

(Because that has always worked well for you.)

“If I stopped all medication this morning, would it still show up in my blood work seven days from now?”

(Probably not.)

Now I had to worry about failing a random doping test after I arrive in Nice, France next week.

(And there goes David’s sleep for another night.)

David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6. He can be reached at [email protected].