Three weekends in a row

We didn't plan it this way, the calendar did. The Honolulu Triathlon is in May, Hibiscus is Memorial Day weekend, and Honu is the first weekend of June, so in 2023 that lined up as three race weekends in a row, and only the last one was the goal. Three race weekends in a row is a lot for anybody, and for somebody who runs on routine it was three Saturdays of alarms that weren't the normal alarm, and I felt every one of them, and I probably said so.

The order mattered. Weekend one, the Olympic tri, was a hard effort for both of us, and since it was the race we'd done badly in 2014 it was a test as much as a race. Weekend two was my day at Hibiscus, with Jay pacing and very deliberately not racing, and weekend three was Jay's first 70.3, with nobody pacing anybody and me on the support side of it. So the load came out as one hard race for both of us, one hard race for me with an easy long run for Jay, and one hard race for Jay with me supporting, and whose day is it is what made three weekends survivable. Without that, two people racing three times would have been six hard efforts in fifteen days, and somebody would have broken, and if I'm honest it would probably have been me.

The second week of May, the one in the video, was the quiet one, with short sessions, sleep, and nothing that would leave a mark on the weekend. It was boring to watch and it was boring to do, and it was the most important week of the three. I wanted to sneak in the workout I'd missed, and I really did want to, but I didn't, as seven days wasn't going to make me any fitter and it could have made me a lot more tired, and I've tested that more times than I'd like to admit.

Would I change much, looking back? Not much, given the calendar, though in some other year I might not do the Olympic three weeks out from a 70.3. In 2023, though, the Olympic was the bridge and it was worth it, as Jay went into Honu knowing his transitions worked and his swim wouldn't panic, because he'd done both at Ala Moana two weeks earlier. Three weekends in a row was never a plan, it was a calendar accident, and we got through it on sleep and one honest conversation about whose day each one was. Then it was weekend three, and Honu.