Ever wondered how not to taper for a race? Here's how....
You have your first sprint tri on Sunday. And so you do the following...
Saturday: 2.5 Hours on a spin bike (45 miles?), followed by a five mile run
Sunday: 12 mile run
Monday: Off (fly home from Denver)
Tuesday: Swim 1.5 miles, Ride 28, run 5
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Swim 1 mile, Ride 60, Run 3
Friday: Swim 1 mile, Run 13.1
Saturday: OFF (volunteer at Deary Tri)
Sunday: RACE!!!! at the Naval Station Sprint.
So yeah... good recipe for a lousy taper!
But in all seriousness this was completely on purpose. After talking with several other traithletes in my club about it I've decided that if the FIRM 1/2 is my focus that it needs to be just that. And any race between now and then needs to be looked at as a training day. I just can't afford to miss getting in the big bricks. In this case based on work travel I have next week I had to fit my "weekend" training in on thursday/friday in order to get it done. So really I only have one day off to recover before the sprint. And although I have no doubt I'm going to have a great fun day on Sunday, I won't be able to race at the peak of my ability. But I will go out there and do my best and practice my transitions and get my first race out of the way so I can get back to focusing on training.
So today was a GVP swim with a good group from NE-Tri of Batla, Joe, Brad, Cass, Kellie and myself. Joe and I headed out early and just did the dock swim. Brad headed out at the same time for the 1.5 mile loop. It seemed like he wasn't pushing all that hard and he didn't have a wetsuit on but Joe and I barely managed to beat him back to the beach. He's fast! In fact his last Ironman swim (2.4 miles) he finished in under an hour.
After the swim I headed home to grab a quick shower and change and then I headed over to the east side to get my long run in. I did a large 4.6 mile loop that encompasses angel street, the boulevard, and hope steet. Its a nice challenging somewhat hilly route. I looped it twice and then out and backed the boulevard portion to come up with 13.1 miles. I was pleased to finish that in 1:53 which is an 8:40 average which for a hilly course on tired legs from yesterdays long ride is just fine with me. I'll take it. The run felt pretty horrible when I first started but once I hit the three mile mark I settled in nicely and found a nice groove for the rest of it. And of course conveniently my run finished at Starbucks.
So now theres no more training between now and the Naval Station Sprint on Sunday morning. Speaking of Sunday morning thats gonna suck... Race starts at 7:30 am and its just about an hour's drive to the race from where I live. Theres also no packet pickup. And being that I hate rushing about that means I have to be at the race site at 5:30am when registration opens which means leaving my house by 4:30am, which means getting up at 3:30am. YUCK! I'm definitely going to need a nap after that one!
But before that I'm going to volunteer at the Deary Tri tomorrow morning which should be good fun. The bummer is that I have to skip out on the Pot Luck BBQ they do after the race as I need to be careful what I eat before my race. And speaking of food theres a huge pancake breakfast after the sprint tri, but I'm going ot have to skip that too. Sprint's just aren't long enough efforts to deserve a splurge like that so I have to be good if I want to stay at my race weight through the end of September. For those of you thinking that I should just splurge a little... you should know that I'm not good at splurging without binging. So I'll pass on the breakfast and instead eat a little protein, a bagel and a banana and head home.
Now its time for me to get some work done and try and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow I'll be at the Deary in the morning and then I think I'll do some bike mount / dismount practice in the afternoon and otherwise spend the day on the couch relaxing.
Oddly enough I'm looking forward to racing on Sunday but I'm not super excited about getting my first triathlon out of the way. I've become so focused on the FIRM that its all I can think about. Sunday just feels like a training day under race conditions. I'll get excited once I'm there but right now I'm not all amped up about it any more than I get excited for a big training day ahead of time. Rest assured that when I wake up at 3:30am I'll be all nervous and excited though I'm sure. Should be an easy day though... its only a 1/3 mile swim, 10.5 mile bike, and a 3 mile run. Which is way too short. Which is not good, as my body does not care for short and fast. I'd rather go long at mildly fast any day. I need to be really carefull and be prepared to reign myself in if need be. It takes me a long time to recover from a short/fast effort and I don't have that kind of recovery time built into my training. So I need to be careful out there. I'm sure it will be fine though, but don't be surprised to see a pretty conservative time from me in this race.
Right... time for me to get to work!
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