The Truth About Tapering, Part IV

I had a nice swim yesterday--just got in and swam 2200 meters straight (close enough to 1/2 IM distance, right?) with the pull buoy. I could tell I've really been giving it to my arms lately. As usual, I swam in the gutter lane, where the jets of incoming water are shooting in at a pretty high speed. They toss me around a bit, so I know I'm not swimming as fast as I might be able to, but that's OK. The water was nice and cool.

When I finished, I had to tell myself that I was done and didn't need to do more. On such a lovely day, I can imagine just hanging out at the pool for an entire day. Someday I need to do that--swim like 2,000, lay around, swim another 1,000, lay around--you get the idea. I did manage to stretch for a few minutes in the pool.

Riding home, as always, felt harder than the ride there, even though I hadn't used my legs to swim at all. When I got home, I finished up the bike bottle of Gatorade and poured myself my post-swim cup of coffee. I also noticed I was very hungry, meaning my evil plan to deprive myself of carbs was working. So I ate a 1/2 pint or whatever size it is of raspberries and 1/2 pint of blueberries, and within an hour I was still starving so I made myself an egg salad sandwich. This, mind you, is all before 9:30AM!

I did a bunch of work and something came up that put me on delay for my brick workout. In the meantime, I was feeling plenty tired and decided I needed to violate my no mid-day caffeine taper policy, so I drank a can of Coke and ate one of those Gu Roctane things. The Gu tasted pretty good (blueberry pomegranate flavor), but I didn't notice anything special about how it felt. I also know now that I will want Ultra Violence in my Fuel Belt for the IMLP marathon and not Coke, although I'm going to start defizzing a liter of each tonight (professional defizzing, you know!).

And then I saw clouds rolling in, checked the radar, and WTF it looked like it was going to rain! Usually a threat of rain gets me to giddy up, but even though I put on the aero helmet and was pretty much naked on Ultra Bitch, I decided it best to hold down the intensity yesterday. With the extra pool riding I've been doing plus the extra yards because I'm doing meters (trust me, in my case it adds up!), I realized I'm doing a bit more than I need to be doing and need to get my legs rested. So in addition to riding easy, I also cut the ride short by about :15. When I got home, I got ready to run, and my legs still felt iffy, so I decided I didn't need to run for :30, but anyway the clouds were really building, so I just started running around the block (my block is pretty big), and adding on all while watching the clouds. Of course, it was impossible to avoid hills, so I turned onto one of the steepest closest to home, I'm running up it mumbling, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," but it's OK.

I managed an even :15 of running, and just as I approached my house, it started sprinkling, and my neighbor directly across the street had just arrived back in his car, and he says to me, "You made it just in time, kiddo!" You know that just made me smile hugely, because I'm thinking here I'm 51 and someone is calling me kiddo! Anyway, literally as soon as I got in my house the sky opened up, and I was happy for it, because we needed the rain. Later on I got a haircut, and when I got home, I decided a salad was not going to cut it for dinner, so I did have some rice. Part of my heavy leg feeling is the carb deprivation so we'll see if I feel more normal today.

So when I add up yesterday it was still 2.6 hours of "work," and through Thursday, I'm up to 9.5 hours of training (lots of swimming). Today I'm going to swim 1/2 hour to 45 minutes, depending (I hope it quits raining), but I am not riding a bike to the pool. Later on I'm running 1:15 and that will be that for today, a good stretch, hopefully I'll see my friend Lila passing out painkiller (booze) after work, and then I'll really start my preparations for next week. My new Fuel Belt arrived yesterday (yeah), so I need to play around with that plus race belt plus streamers. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, so maybe I won't do that 2-mile open water race, who knows? At this point it doesn't matter, but I'm sort of looking forward to that sprint on Sunday!

The Truth About Tapering, Part III

First, check out my new bitch! Sorry, Cindy, she's mine! I pre-ordered her a few months ago and completely forgot and then she arrived on Tuesday! Here's another tip for your taper, while you're at home, anyway: arrange to have gifts delivered to yourself! It's really a mental boost to get something brand spanking new during your taper, considering that by this time everything you have for race day should have been tested out already.

Yesterday was another gorgeous day. I awoke after another good 8-hour sleep (I guess my evil plan of cutting out any mid-day training caffeine is working) to a crystal clear blue sky (once the sun came up, that is!). For some reason, on my training plan, I had a hefty swim workout planned for Friday, but that is the day before a swim race, so I had decided I'd do the big workout today (yesterday) because I only had to do a :45 run later in the day.

I have successfully not worn bike shorts on LGL or Bitchie for 2 weeks now, and as it's July, I stopped wearing a shirt over my swimsuit on the way to the pool effective yesterday. I'd rather not wear shorts, either, but CF has a wide saddle, and I need something over the bottom! It was almost 70 when I left for the outdoor pool, and I was glad to not induce extra sweating from wearing a shirt.

I got to the pool by about 6:20, and my posse of cops in training were there. We started chatting right away, and when I finally got in the water (apparently I was in no particular hurry), I demonstrated a bunch of drills to the guys. I'm trying not to bombard them but I did want to show them where this is all going. They are all brutally strong, but they already realize that swimming is about technique more than strength. After all, me, a tiny Yard Gnome, can move through the water pretty well!

Well, the cops were finished, and by the time we went through the drills and all it was 7:00. No worries, I have plenty of time to get in 3300 meters! So I was just about done with my warmup, and Chuck shows up. I stand corrected--he has not done an Ironman--he's done a number of HIM's--but still from what he tells me he trained like a complete fucking maniac when he was doing them. He picks up my baggie with swim workouts in it and inspects what I'm doing. I pointed out that I'd do the big workout today so I'm a little rested for Saturday's swim race (although I could care less how I do--it will just be nice to swim in Crystal Lake, which is beautiful). Chuck got in, I finished my warmup, and now it was time for my main set:

30 x 50 (20"), as odds very Hard, evens very Easy.
3x300 (20") pull at race pace

I haven't done this workout since last year, and for once, I was looking forward to all those 50's! Plus, I had Chuck in my lane, and that was plenty motivating. So I actually blew the carbon out of my arms and was surprised that I had some speed in me, but I tell you, after about 20 of those 50's, even though half of them are easy, your arms are pretty much screaming from the lactic acid buildup. And then I just rested 20" before getting onto the 300's, although I did one 300 and was sick of turning (in a 50-meter pool, go figure), so I swam 600 straight after that. And my pace wasn't bad at all! I was sort of in shock that I was able to swim well, especially since the water was pretty warm.

Chuck and I finished about the same time and then we just hung out in the water talking about who knows what, and we live near one another and so we agreed to meet for our ride home. I'm laughing thinking about us riding home because we rode pretty much two abreast and were just talking and talking and it was beautiful outside (bright sunshine, no clouds) and we both had good swim workouts and it was fun. Chuck peeled off about 1/2 mile from where I live, and he may make it to the pool on Friday, as will the cops, so that will be fun.

One of the things we talked about on the ride back was how there's a lot of riding uphill, because it seems much easier on the way to the pool, but we laughed that part of it is that we've just done a serious workout. But my legs were now letting me know, hey, dumbass, you pretty much did a race yesterday, what the fuck are you doing? Too bad, I just can't justify driving to the pool when it's so nice outside. Although since Chuck and I were riding side by side, I think we both may have been pushing the pace a bit even though we were both on hybrids--ya think???

Back home to work, and I'm feeling a little tired, like I actually worked out or something (go figure!). When it was almost time for me to go run, I could tell my legs weren't going to be too happy about it, but I only needed to go out for :45, so no worries there. I decided to go into the wind, which took me west and north. It is odd for this time of year to have winds out of the NNW, especially when it's in the 80's, but hey, I don't care.

Running this direction took me through a whole bunch of rollers, and I also made sure I ran right out in the open just to make it harder on me even though my legs felt like crap. That run had everything--tired legs, wind, hills, bonkiness and heat. You can't beat that! When I got home, all I could think was fuck, that felt kind of hilly, so I went to this website to check it out (I don't own a Garmin and don't really want one), and what the fucking hell, I guess I was right:





See, even though I live in Illinois, which everyone thinks is pancake flat, the nice little suburb I live in has a good amount of rollers. And I live in a little valley, so pretty much anywhere I go from home is up and then rolling, but this particular run was about one of the rolliest routes I've picked in a long time. But it's all good, since I run on rollers pretty much all the time, that I'm used to it, and I actually don't like completely flat runs (well ask me that in about a week!).

So I laughed at what I had done to myself, and then my legs were pretty much toasted and I wanted to take a nap or at least lay down, but I couldn't. I finished up working for the day, and then I headed to The Bike Shop to get my tubulars checked out, a final derailleur check and just to hang out a bit. On the way, I felt compelled to stop at Binny's to get some booze for the guys at the shop who take such good care of me and my bikes, and also a few liquor-filled candies, which Anthony and I enjoyed. I had Anthony reattach the X-nut on my Hydrotail, which had fallen out on Sunday (I needed a lock nut on the screw), and it was hilarious because he needed my small fingers to get the nut inside while he inserted the screw, and I'm telling him, "Wait, don't stick it in yet!" while I was positioning the nut over the hole. Well, it was funny at the time...

As soon as I got home, I had to mow the lawn, and I must say, I've never seen a better looking lawn in July, but of course, that's from all the rain we had in May and June, and I'm not complaining! My flowers are looking stupendous, life is just fucking awesome!

After mowing, I came inside and chopped ingredients for my dinner salad, popped a beer and stretched for :25, then sat down to eat dinner finally around 7:30. Last night's salad was greens, 2 hard-boiled eggs, a can of albacore tuna, 2 apricots, a handful of blueberries and a tomato, liberally doused in olive oil, balsamic glaze and a freshly squeezed lemon. Yum! I've gone through almost a dozen eggs in the last 5 days.

This morning I'm sensing a little sadness, as I can tell the days are shortening up, but that helps me to sleep a little longer, and I got almost 8 hours again. I'm going to do a flop around in the pool swim, and then I've got another brick workout to do, but I am not going (famous last words!) to go out at sprint pace--I don't think I can today, but we'll see. I'm going to ride Bitchie with the disk on and maybe the aero helmet. Scratch that. If I go out like that, I have to ride hard! We'll see how my legs are--while I ran hilly yesterday, I didn't run very fast.

It looks to be another gorgeous day. Have I said this is my best summer ever? Sometimes when I stop and think about that, I think how could that be when I just lost my parents so recently? But then I think they know how much I am kicking the living shit out of every day, and in the end, we all make our own happiness, right?

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:

Another Great Ride and Brick Run Today

I drove to Matt's to ride with him today. Originally, I had thought I'd be there by 8AM, but it was pretty chilly this morning, so I called him and said we'd be riding by 9. No worries there!

I had not seen Matt's new Bianchi, and he hadn't seen LGL live, so there was a meeting and greeting of the two Italian bikes!

I made up a new rule--when I'm riding LGL, I will only ride with someone else who has an Italian bike :) Just kidding. I will ride with anyone who is not a loser.

I just did not want to wear tights today, which meant that I was chilly on my legs much of the day.

Today, we set a new world record in the time it took before we were talking about food: 22 seconds! As we headed out, the winds were a blowing, just as badly as yesterday, but neither of us cared much about the wind--the point was just to ride and not slack too much into the wind.

I have ridden in that area before, but I told Matt that I did not want to be on any roads with dogs. We have been chased by some mean ass dogs in the past.

After about 1 hour, I really needed to piss. So did Matt. But we had to find something other than wide open side of the road to do it, even though neither of us is shy. So we turned onto a side road, and I took a picture of Matt finishing up:












and then he took one of me WHILE I WAS PEEING:









aerodynamic peeing

Nice, huh? Then I figured I should take an actual picture of the spot we had chosen:









Next, I spotted an out building the color of Matt's bike, and suggested we should take a pic of his bike in front of it:









Somewhere before this we encountered Son of Cujo the dog, who took chase, and I screamed at Matt to get him under control. Obviously, no time for pics, and I was scared shitless, but was surprised at the amount of power I could put out in trying to outrun the dog. I was breathing pretty heavily long after that.

And then we both needed water, and headed to a Walgreen's, and we got water and Cherry Coke:









While Matt was inside, I fondled his bike :) LGL would definitely have sex with it!

Then we headed down Scary Road, so named because there were all these houses set way far from the road with lots of trees near the road, and we both knew that dogs could come running out from anywhere. And one did--a Newfoundland. He actually didn't seem that scary, and I didn't expect him to bite, but still, you never know. That dog sprint really hurt. And then we both cranked away just to get the hell off Scary Road before any more dogs could come at us!

We came upon a nice horse farm, and we both observed some rather pendulous schlongs:









Finally, as we closed in on Matt's house, I had to pee one more time, and this time I noticed some heavy duty construction machinery just off to the side and thought that would be a good place to take a whizz. Well, thanks, Matt--he had to take a shot of me about to drop trou and then several (I've included only 1 here) of me pissing. Nice!















not so aerodynamic peeing

Getting closer to Matt's house, we saw a peloton of geese and goslings crossing the road we were on, and we both thought they were so cute, and so waited until they all got into the pond:









There are about 40 goslings in that photo! Obviously, it was many families combined.

Finally, we got back, and I needed to run, and I did. I actually felt pretty good running, since it was completely flat. I ended up using my butt crack bottle holder method, so I made Matt take a pic of me with it, and also just to prove that I did, indeed, run:














After I showered, Matt made an awesome salad and homemade pizza and we chowed down, and then we sat around drinking and talking.

In case you are wondering, we rode for 3:28, and my IF was .789, so close to tempo pace again! I was pretty pleased with how well I was able to ride today considering what I did yesterday, and running wasn't so bad either! One thing I know for sure is all that food last night was key.

Perfect end to a perfect day! I hope to ride with Matt in 2 weeks, once Triple T is out of the way.

Oh yeah--I'm ready for that bad boy now. Later or early tomorrow I'll post up my training totals. Another great week, and I feel strong and ready to race!