2 weeks till race day

Today was a 2hr ride. Zone 3. Maintain focus and ride hard. Did pretty well.
It is funny how much road quality can effect average speed. I do most of my rides on a bumpy, hilly bad stretch of road that does not get much traffic. You can go for 20mi without a stoplight.
Today I went on the freeway access road. Smooth. 1.5 mph faster.
Sure hope the roads are smooth in Canada.
I miss my dog. It has been 48hrs and I guess that it is starting to sink in. He is really gone. I wish at times like this I had a belief in an afterlife. I told our 6yr old that George is in heaven. Where he is allowed to get up on the couch whenever he wants and he gets to eat lots of peanut butter. I wish I believed it.
And I can't really get behind the idea of racing for George either. Like "that is what he would have wanted". Because it isn't. What he would have wanted would have been for me to sit on the floor with him and feed him treats while I scratched his ears.
Endurance nation says that in an ironman or a half at some point in the race you reach "the line". The line is that point on the run where it gets very very hard to keep going. All of your race plan execution is about pushing that line back as far as you can get it to go. But once you get to the line, you need to rely on your "one thing" to keep you moving. The one thing is your motivation. The reason that you race. I'd like to say that george was my motivation. But it isn't true.
What seems true at the moment is that I train to stay strong and sane. And to put myself in a position to race well. To do something special that I can be proud of.
And I guess that I race to validate the work of training. So at mile 6 on the run when I want to slow down, it will be all of the times that I got up at 4:50am to train. All of the money I didn't make because I didn't have the energy or time to work more. All of the times I was short with my kids or with my wife because I was exhausted.
The vacation that was centered around going to MY race. All of the people who gave a little or a lot so that I could get to the starting line. If I won't keep going hard for me, I need to do it for them.