The Immensity of It All- 13 days to GO

An Ironman Triathlon is:

2.4 mile swim. 
112 mile bike ride.
26.2 mile run. 
140.6 miles in under 17 hours.
(What happens if it takes you more than 17 hours?)
You get disqualified :(

It's a staggering amount of mileage in a short amount of time, but this number alone doesn't tell the whole story. Starting in May, when the last 8 weeks of training commences, the volume of miles looks like this:

Since I run before work, the longer the run, the earlier the wake up.
By the point I was doing 18 & 20 mile runs, I was going to bed at 11 & waking up at 2 to run.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
I love running in NYC. The streets are always lit. Since it is a grid, there is no chance of getting lost. There are plenty of NYC landmarks to run past & there's no danger of wild animals.

I knew that ultra runners compete in events where they run for 24 straight hours, so I wasn't worried about training on minimal amounts of sleep.  
My body is ok with sleeping for 2-3 hours a night, running for 4 hours & then teaching a full day of classes.

Once again, do not try this at home.

In the last 8 weeks of training, there were long swims that lasted for almost 2 hours.
(With breaks?)
No breaks. Flip turn at the wall & keep on swimming. I kept repeated my mantra: Nose facing the bottom of the pool, arms outstretched. I wasn't bored, but when the swim was done my arms were sore & I was starving.

And...there were 100 + mile bike rides.
(With breaks?)

Only time I stopped was for red lights, stop signs or to buy more water. Spending the day, riding my bike, with the sun in my face is one of my happy places. I would pedal north, rolling through town after town. Teaneck, Leonia, Fort Lee, Englewood Cliffs, Alpine, Sparkill, Piermont, Nyack, Congers, Havestraw, Stony Point, Bear Mountain, West Point, Storm King Mountain...

(How long did those rides last?)
Over 8 hours.

(At that pace, won't you be disqualified at the Ironman for being too slow?)
I trained on 9W, a stretch of road with many more hills than the actual race.

The end result was that in 8 weeks I
Swam 47,000  meters
Biked  800 miles
Ran    155 miles 
These numbers are incomprehensible to me.
The swim is double of what I had expected.
The bike averaged out that I was doing 100 miles a week, every week.
The run...as someone who once struggled to run more than 3 miles at a time, I am just speechless.
I had a total caloric burn of:

And those were just workout burning calories.

I burn an average of 1,500 calories a day without training. 

So in 8 weeks, my total burn was about 165,000.

To avoid losing too much weight, I increased my caloric intake.

To find out what I ate, you will have to wait another week...