The Truth about Tapering, Part I

I thought I'd do something for posterity here and record as much as possible about my taper--how I feel, what I'm doing, what I think works, etc.

My "official" full taper began yesterday. I began my run taper pretty much 2 weeks ago (my longest run was 3 weeks ago now). I began my strength taper last week, and yesterday was the start of my bike taper. I don't really start my swim taper until next week--there's really no point to that with me since I'm not a fast swimmer. But I can tell you that swimming 2.4 miles won't feel hard to me on race day, since I'll have done it like 4 or 5 times in training, and my weekly yardage has been up there (I might hit about 16,000 yards this week).

So, how did yesterday go? I woke up after 8.5 hours of sleep, which hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. But when I woke up I felt like crap. My eyes were puffy, and I felt a little dizzy, like I have a sinus infection coming on. Some of this I am attributing to the annual changing of the diet, because by about this time in training, I am fucking sick of carbs, I mean stuffing myself to the point of discomfort because I need the calories. I have switched over to more protein (which I probably need anyway), and am now trying to eat a ton of fruit and veggies. My GI tract doesn't exactly like this, but too bad. I'll get back on carbs a few days before the race, or maybe even this weekend, since I'm racing Saturday and Sunday!

Anyway, I wanted to at least swim yesterday. It looked like maybe rain, and my legs felt like shit, and I just couldn't justify using my car to get to a pool, so I decided to walk to the Y, which is only about .5 miles from home. I decided to do a drill workout, as for some reason I had this 3400 yard monster on my training plan! WTF, I did not need to do that! It actually felt good to swim--the water was a decent temperature, and it was nice and relaxing. One of the things I dislike about taper is that you have all this extra "think" time. For me, exercising is an opportunity to get away from all the thinking. So it was nice to swim and well, just swim.

After I finished, I spent a little bit of time stretching in the sauna, and then walked home. I enjoyed the walk and took my sweet time. When I got home, now work was facing me, and as usual, once I'm officially tapering, I find it difficult to focus on work. But I did my best, and got lucky, I suppose, because my boss is on vacation this week. Not that that gives me license to slack--but it gives me even greater flexibility, and when I'm done for a day, I'm just done.

I wanted to also get in a strength workout yesterday, but my muscles were telling me NO FUCKING WAY TAKE THE REST OF THE DAY OFF. So I did, but since I couldn't concentrate on work and really not much of anything else, and since I wasn't exercising and don't want to eat too much, and I really didn't want to be thinking either, all I could think is I want a drink. So now I had to distract myself from that thought since it was maybe 2:00 in the afternoon and I'm supposed to be working. So I gathered up all the paperwork required for getting to the start line (driving directions to Cindy's and then Lake Placid, packing checklist, to do checklist, 3 days before race day and including it checklist including transition bags, proof of registration, daily workout and life schedule from now until race day--fuck, it's a lot of crap, but it works for me), and started organizing things. I finally had ordered the last of the gear crap (a pink Fuel Belt and rain jacket) that should hopefully arrive before I leave in a week.

I think I got all the papers together around 3PM and then decided, what the hell, I'm having a cocktail. So I poured some vodka and cranberry juice (the juice was left over from Triple T) into a mug from my very first marathon (I guess this made it a special occasion), and took everything outside to think about. I also fixed myself a foot bath, because my feet have been taking a beating while I'm doing yardwork because I'm such an idiot and always wear flip flops and so my feet are constantly getting scuffed on the heels and filthy, and even though the pool removes a lot of the dirt, I needed to work on my heels.

So I put the foot bath under the chair, sit down, and man it was hot on my feet, but I got used to it, and then I sipped a cocktail and pondered all the shit I need to get done, including doing 3 races (2 this weekend and then the big enchilada). But now that I had all the paper shit together, it didn't seem that daunting, and the foot bath felt nice, and I just tried to relax and enjoy everything.

After about 1/2 hour of that, I fed my foot water to the potted plants on my patio (I sure hope they like peppermint feet water!), scrubbed my feet and put lotion on them, checked back into work with a new attitude, and hung out and solved a few work crises before killing it for the day and then going to massage school.

I was starting to feel better, at least not sickly, and chalked it all up to the taper. The massage felt really great, but I wanted more and deeper, knowing that I really need it. I hope that my buddy Mike will come through for me with a bonus massage later in the week. I told him I really need it!

I ate another ginormous salad for dinner after the massage, and it was tasty. Of course, TV was crap, so I called it a day around 8:30.

Today I woke up at 3:30AM. Why? Because I had to take a shit. Why? Because I've been eating so many luscious fruits and veggies. Nice. I was pissed, but also glad that I had gone to bed so early so at least I got 7 hours. I looked at the weather, and there was a big blob of a storm just to the west, and I was sad because I really wanted to swim outdoors. But it was early, so I had time.

I didn't feel sickly this morning, however, my nose was running like a mofo. Once again, I hoped I wasn't catching a cold. I did some more organizing, more shitting (I still claim that lettuce is a waste of my time especially when it seems 1/2 of it just comes out the other end), a little weed pulling, and then when I checked the Doppler around 5:30AM it looked like the blob has dissipated and was going to stay south of me, meaning all clear to bike to the outdoor pool!

It was really humid, so I didn't bother putting a shirt over my swimsuit to ride. I noticed right away that my legs did not feel like ass! I was pretty happy about this, and also, once I shot Nasonex up my nose, it stopped running, so probably I don't have a cold! But I did notice that my deltoids are a bit fucked up, probably from the large (for me) amounts of swimming I've been doing. If that's my biggest problem today, fine by me!

The sky still looked a bit ominous as I rode, but then I got to thinking I've never been rained on while on Clipless Fuck, and didn't care if it did rain on me, so it was all good. The pool was relatively uncrowded, and I was just basically going in to flop around a bit. I did an 800 warmup and then 1500 pull with a 100 kick cooldown. Easy peasy. The water was a bit warm, but once again, I totally enjoyed swimming. People always ask me what I think about when I do straight swimming (1500 being pretty short, though), and so I will now let you in on my secret. I think like this:

one one one one one one one one one one one
two two two two two two two two two two two
three three three three three three three three

and so on for each length of the pool. Occasionally a stray thought will enter my head like I wish I would see some hottie swimming next to me, but that's really about it.

I enjoyed the short swim, enjoyed the shower afterwards (what is it about showering in nearly open air that is so great???), enjoyed the ride home, and started thinking about my next workout. I felt kind of bonky on the ride home, which is perfect, because that means my eating strategy is right on. I want my body to be SCREAMING for carbs by next week. Until then, I can manage a drop of a few pounds (I'm about 3 high right now...they should come off easily) and then my muscles will literally soak up the carbs next week like a sponge!

In the meantime, though, I am suffering a little with a growly stomach, angry muscles, a sense of deprivation (no more Cheetos or Twinkies for about 3 weeks when I start to ramp up for NothingMan, although I continue to take in Gatorade during workouts and following proper recovery protocol), the coming and going of various symptoms of illness and injury, but I'm nowhere near being excited about anything. Mostly I'm just happy when I am able to relax and not be too worried about anything. I've got all my handy-dandy checklists organized, and now I just need to get through every day and do what I need to do. I hope I start to feel a bit more peppy for the weekend races (2-mile swim on Saturday and sprint triathlon on Sunday), but if I don't, I'm not going to get bent out of shape.

But I guess I should be somewhat excited, because this is Ironman number: