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August 21, 2008
The Final Stretch
My A race is four weeks and one day away. Oh my goodness, this is so exciting and nerve wracking and everything!! I have never been in a race where I do not feel that I can easily finish in the top 50% of my age group. What if all the awesome people go, and none of the slow ones do? What if I finish last? What if I can't get my wet suit off? What if I flat out? Now that my training is in the final stages and I am two weeks away from taper, I can see that my nerves are beginning to show. Then again, this bout of anxiety could have been caused by the fact that we had about 5 million cookies, candies, and cake in the office today for a project and birthday celebration. Refined Sugar = Anxious Barb apparently.
Anyway, life is crazy right now. Tomorrow I am leaving for Vegas for a bachelorette party. That means crazy training early in the week, as I will not be doing any brick workouts there. Next Friday I am going to Southern California for a weekend. The day after Labor Day I am moving. Two weeks after that I am a bridesmaid in a wedding, and the week after that is race week! I hardly have time to train but I'm getting it all in (although I might skip a swim this week, although it's a cutback week in swimming so I'm not all that concerned). This week I have been feeling somewhat fatigued, but my workouts have not suffered in speed so I'm okay with it. In fact, I have been feeling pretty good.
On Tuesday I had a running workout at the track and ran 8 x 400m all between 89 and 94 seconds. I was so excited!! My legs felt awful, it was windy, and there was a big group of marathon runners jogging around the track for some reason. I was all prepared to have a bad workout but I just focused on form and mechanics, and got it done. Yesterday I had a bike workout and I thought that was going to be somewhat rough, but I just put my head down, focused on my music (I do these workouts in a state park where there are no traffic lights and hardly any cars), and got it done. And this morning I had a swim speed workout which was tough but awesome. I feel like it is a good thing that I'm getting to a point where I feel fatigue in my arms - it means that I'm hopefully improving from a technique perspective. I had some great 100's and 50's and felt really strong and smooth in the water.
Since I won't be doing my long brick on Saturday, I am leaving in a bit to ride for 2 hours and run for 30 minutes. It's not the exact workout I'm supposed to do but it's just not really possible for me to ride for 3 hours on a day when I have to work. So I am making the executive decision that it's close enough. I may take an early flight back here on Sunday, so I can ride more, but we'll see - the DNC is starting here on Monday so it may be impossible to get on a flight.
Overall I am feeling good and I cannot say enough good things about my coach and generally about heart rate training. I was a skeptic for a long time but I have finally started drinking the Kool-Aid, and I can't believe I didn't before! It is amazing to feel fresh all the time, to know I am putting in hard workouts and yet my legs do not feel destroyed. And to see my times as fast as they were in college, at least in workouts. We'll see how it pays off on race day!
Posted by barb at August 21, 2008 2:56 PM