I'm half way there & livin' on a prayer!

Reached a milestone today - I'm halfway through the training programme which means that 15-weeks today is race day. It's now 8.25pm and I can't help but wonder if I'll still be out on the course or if I'll have finished! If I'm still out on the course I'll have been going for about 14 & a half hours. God, that's enough to bring on a flutter of panic. This week's been my highest mileage to date and is probably on a par with my peak training weeks for the Outlaw Half. So to give you a flavour of where I'm at at the halfway stage - this week I've logged about 90-odd miles of cycling, 28 miles of running and 6k of swimming. In truth, the swimming is less than it should be but I'm doing my best, and frustratingly I've had to cut back my running a bit and knock all the speedwork on the head for now as an old achilles problem has reared its ugly head.
I'm often pretty shattered after each session, but the restorative effects of sleep are amazing, and although I go to bed thinking I can't possibly get up at 6am and do another hour, the alarm goes off and I do!
I really love my rest days though. I don't have any problems not training for a day, maybe it's my intrinsic lazy streak coming out. Yesterday, bouyed up by the fact that I'm also on holiday for two weeks,  I happily turned off my alarm and pottered around in PJ's, drinking coffee and eating chocolate biscuits, until late morning - not a trace of guilt.
It was also time to go shopping for new running shoes, my old ones have plenty of miles in them so I splashed out on the coolest-looking trainers I've ever had. Yep they were expensive, but I figured that as I'm running 5 times a week they work out at just 20p a run - bargain! After that extravagance it was time for home, except that we were passing a bike shop and it would have been rude not to have dropped in. IronPhil's face lit up when I said: "Shall we pop into Evans?" He really has married a woman who is not only a willing participant, but is actually suggesting an idle wander around a bike shop to touch carbon and lycra that we know we'll never buy. The only thing that could've made the day better was if I'd suggested going for a beer instead of a coffee!
So I have a much-needed recovery week ahead, which gives me a chance to re-build and repair with a slightly reduced training load, which will set me up nicely for next weekend's trip to Lancashire to recce the new Ironman bike course. Aaaargh!