Swim Bike Run Live

Tapering Sucks.

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

I thought I was sore and beat up last week, but now that I’ve cut my training by about half, I’m in this weird middle spot between hardcore training and racing, and I don’t like it. Today I was starting to think about Mooseman (coming up this Saturday) and I was getting all nervous/amped/full of butterflies.

I usually don’t mind getting all nervous before a race, and it actually helps me stay really focused and build a plan, but not ON TUESDAY before a Saturday race. Seriously. I need to chill out. Thankfully just recognizing I’m getting into race mode too early is helping me relax a bit. My legs are starting to feel a little more juiced and my whole body is starting to recover from a few hard weeks of ass-kicking.

Sunday night, I was playing around with my heart rate monitor and laid in bed to test out my resting heart rate. I felt like I couldn’t get it down. I could feel it thumping away and no matter how much I was able to slow my breathing, I couldn’t get it below 62. That isn’t ridiculously high for me, but clearly higher than it should be, especially with all the hours of training I’ve been putting in. Even when I’m trying to rest my heart is thumping faster than normal! I was clearly in need of some tapering.

I did the same test this morning, about a day and a half later and with complete rest in between, it was WAY lower already. This time it was hovering around 52-54. Much closer to where it should be. If my body didn’t start to perk up, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, because last weekend I was NOT feeling in race shape. Hopefully it keeps dropping. I would be PSYCHED to have a resting heart rate in the 40′s. I don’t think that I’ve had that since when I was a cross country running maniac in High School.

Since warding off the butterflies, I’ve been trying to SLOWLY get myself back into race mode without getting all stressed out and letting the adrenaline start to go. Yesterday I cleaned up my bike, wiped down the chain, and lubed it up again to try and distract me.

The good news is that I found a perfect use for some old ugly race t-shirts. I cut up one of the ugliest ones (from a race that I absolutely hated) and went to town on my whole chain/chain ring/cassette/derailer. I think I must have pulled at least 2 pounds of black gunk from random little nooks and crannies down there! Hopefully my little Angela will be running much smoother come race day and all that crap stuck in my chain and derailer was just some pre-season resistance training.

Hopefully the rest of the week goes smoothly and I can get in a few nice easy Z1 workouts before the gun goes off on Saturday!

Category : Training Log, Triathlon

Tags: mooseman, taper, Triathlon

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