I admit to enjoying a post race high – for several days.
Oh yes, I’ve been conspicuously wearing my Patriot t-shirt and socks and drinking from my steel pint glass. I’ve been more than stoked to share my happily surprising time for the half ironman. I have, indeed. But the buzz is a little more difficult to maintain than I imagined.
“Are you going to do a full one?”
Wait, what?!
…am I gonna do a full one?!
Ya know…a half iron is pretty far…and it takes a pretty long time…and an awful lot of effort to complete.
It is a whole entire race, I swear.
It’s not like eating half a cookie and leaving the other half sitting on a plate. It’s not like running Boston and just hanging out in Wellesley for the afternoon. There wasn’t any more to do when I stopped – I did the whole thing. And it was far – 70.3 miles to be precise and it was long – over 5 1/2 hours. Sure a 10k is double the 5k – but we’re talking about racing for half of a 24 hour day. Whoa! This is an entirely different animal.
Ok yes – I intend to do a full one, someday – provided I stay healthy and when my kids are older and I can train without wishing I could be two places at once. But in the meantime, I’d like to bask in the glow of completing a half ironman without discussing the missing half.
Maybe I should just stick to calling it a 70.3 – it just doesn’t sound as cool, though.
life. 
Something happened to me each time I “leveled up” over the last five years. My perspective of long changed. The 2.5-3 hours of an Oly seemed long, when I did my first one after having only done sprints. And then the distance became not-long-but-not-short-either when I did my first 70.3.
Now that I’m training for an Ironman and still doing other distances, I can definitely say that the 70.3 is still really long. Just because the Ironman is twice as long doesn’t mean a half is easy. In fact, I think the enormity of the Ironman is just very hard to grasp except in fleeting moments of clarity. (For example, the day I got to work at 7AM and left–rather tired–at 8PM and thought, “13 hours. That’s about how long your Ironman will be. And you won’t be sitting at a desk.”) But really, you just have to compartmentalize all of that and not think about it. 🙂 A half feels big enough to be simultaneously completely comprehensible and completely badass!
I totally agree that a half is long! I did my first half last fall and am about to do the same race this fall. I am not any more confident than I was a year ago, but I know it’ll be worth crossing that finish line and having that “after race high” that comes with it! I let my friends convince me to sign up for my first full next May, but I’m not letting myself think about how long THAT will take until I get this 70.3 done first, haha.