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June 10, 2008
Taper!!
Well I am in day two of my taper for my first race of the year, and I am bouncing off the walls!! Hoo boy, I know I will hate the taper by Friday but right now it is nice. I am all about good sleep, good nutrition, and nice short workouts this week. I am sure the sleep is making the biggest impact on me right now as I slept in until 6:25 this morning which is really late for me. Okay, well it is only 25 minutes later than my normal wake-up time but it seems to make a sizable difference. I mean right now I am sitting at my desk and I do not want to close my eyes and fall asleep at all!
I am going to go ahead and recap the last couple training days because they were awesome, so this may be a long entry.
We will start with last Friday which was a fairly big day. I have gotten in the habit of swimming 4 days a week, with Fridays being a really easy 20 minute workout. This is just to keep my 'pool legs' on or something. I don't really know, as I am self-coached these days I just made it up but I do enjoy it. I did a 300 warmup (my pool is 25 meters so whenever I talk about distances they are in meters), and then did a few 100's and a few 50's. I think it was maybe 4-6 of each. Then I did a nice mellow cool down. It was a gorgeous day (we have an outdoor pool at my gym) so I just had a great time. This was at lunch time. I left work at 4:00 and headed home, so I could bust out a nice little brick workout. I rode to a local reservoir, around it, and back, which is 27.5 miles. This was my standard ride last year before I realized that I would be faster if I rode uphill, and farther than 27.5 miles, occasionally. Last year my PR for this ride was 1:32. On Friday I rode it in 1:26. So that was awesome! It did not even feel like that hard an effort. I had my transition area all set up in my living room so I ran inside, put my bike away, changed, and headed out for an easy 4 mile run. This was about 35 minutes which was also awesome! What a great workout. And the best part was that after the run I got to go for sushi, yum!!
Saturday I was planning to meet a friend for an open water swim at the Chatfield Gravel Pond. All was going as planned until I was half way to Chatfield (which is about 25 minutes from my hosue), and I realized I left my wet suit at home. Um, whoops! The water is getting warmer every week but it's not warm enough for me to swim without a wet suit yet, so I hurried back home. Bobbie, my friend, had a run to do afterwards so we did not get to swim together. So I started my workout around 8:35 instead of 8:00, which was not a big deal. I swam across the pond and back (900 meters each way), and felt okay but not great. However I did feel that my sighting, and thus my swimming in a straight line, did improve.
After the swim I did as quick a transition as I could do, and I got going on my bike. I did a moderately hard ride that we call the Deer Creek Canyon ride. You basically ride out from the reservoir, and then ride up the canyon for a long time. I got to 1:25 and turned around, and made it back at about 2:01. That is how big a difference the gradient makes - my average on the way up was about 11 mph, but by the time I got to my car it was 15.5. It was a pretty fun ride, and there were a lot of guys to say hi to (and check out their bikes, which is a fun long ride pastime), so that was a good workout.
Sunday I went up to Boulder with my friend Laura for a 10 mile run. We were up late Saturday night and we both felt dehydrated but considering that we had a great run. The rest of the day was super busy but it did not involve any more workouts unless you consider weeding or planting flowers a workout, but I think that would be a stretch.
Yesterday, day one of Taper Madness, had me riding for around an hour very easy with my friend Michelle in the morning, and doing our personal training session after work. We did a nice easy session which was great. We used this power plate device which is basically a vibrating platform on which you do squats and stuff. It was kind of weird!
And this morning I woke up and had a really nice swim. I did a nice long warmup, then did 3 x 300, and then cooled down. Each 300 was faster than the last one, and they are all much faster than I used to do for 300's, so I was pretty pleased. And now here I am! I have a track workout with my tri club tonight, which I will do unless it is really long.
I am working really hard to calm my nerves about Sunday, and to ensure that I do not have unrealistic expectations going into the race. I do think it is getting better as I can think about the race without my stomach jumping into my throat now!
Posted by barb at June 10, 2008 8:37 AM