Taper Time

This was one serious weekend of workouts.

• 3900 meters in the pool Friday. If I had to do very many of these, in a pool, I think I would slit my wrists with a butter knife! OMG! The boredom that sets in before it's half done is mind boggling. The only thing that would have made it worse was if I'd done it in a short pool. The plus side was that I finished it in about 1:42 and the distance was slightly longer than my race distance. Hopefully, I will not have any extraneous issues during the swim and will easily make the 2:20 cutoff. 
• 115 mile bike ride Saturday. The temps were about 10 degrees cooler than my previous long rides, and we had a cloud cover for most of the ride. However, this ride was extremely hard. I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep the night before (avocado attack!) and my body is weary. I didn't feel great for any of the ride, but the last 20 miles of this one had me whining big time in my head. For the first time, I started cramping a little--right quad, both feet. I thought I was taking a lot of salt, but obviously, I still don't have my nutrition down. When I finally pulled into the starting point, the first words out of my mouth were "I don't think I can do this." The thought of running 26 steps much less 26.2 miles made me feel like bursting into tears. I sat down on the curb, but found that my hips protested loudly if I did anything with my legs but leave them straight out in front of me, and I got a severe cramp in my abs. I was a mess, that even a cold soak in an epsom salt bath didn't resolve.
• 19 mile run today. This is the weirdest damn sport. I was truly dreading attempting this run in lieu of how I felt yesterday and last night. However, once I got going, I had my best run yet of my IM training. My legs felt strong and I was able to maintain my pace even on hills. Go figure. I had on my plan to run 22, but I stopped at my house at 19 to get more fluids, and that was the end of that. My coach had already given me permission to cut it shorter, based on my running background, I would have worried more if I was stopping short because I just couldn't finish it out. The morning was blissfully cool, though, which is always a big factor to me, but even so, it was nice to feel like I had my running legs back.

The bulk of my training is done.  I still don't know that I feel fully prepared, but again, I am going to have to let go and trust my training. I have put in the work. I have experience with endurance sports. I just need to be really conscious of taking in enough calories and to not go out too fast on the bike. The ride on Saturday was not exactly confidence-building. While I was running today, I realized that because my previous 100-miler was last Sunday, I've put in 240 miles in 7-days' time. I've also gotten little sleep last week on top of 8000 yards of swimming and 20 miles of running. Perhaps my performance on the bike was due to all these factors as well... I hope so! 112 miles is a damn long way.

Now, the taper "crazies" will set in. It's not an abrupt taper, so perhaps it won't feel as drastic as it can. I'm going back to my chiropractor next week and getting a sports massage the week after to try to get my body loose and aligned. Ready or not, the time is slipping by.

Yikes...I can't believe this thing that has been in the forefront of my mind for the past ten months is only three weeks away.  Yikes!