The Beauty of the Taper

Jodi, I've got tapering down now. Thanks for your advice!

This week, for probably the first time ever, I have followed my training schedule nearly exactly. I even think there's magic in the day of the week Grandison assigns, or at least the order of activities.

Monday was a rest day. Although I packed my gym bag with thoughts of weight training, I completely blew it off. Grandison said to rest by golly!!! Tuesday, I met Richard and Megan for a 12 mile ride. Here's my one major deviation. I couldn't remember whether the training schedule said race pace or easy, so I went totally balls to the wall for an 18.4 mph average. We were supposed to ride easy. Oops. Afterwards, I dropped my bike at Performance for a thorough cleaning which it desperately needed. They did a nice job and turned it around quickly for me.

Yesterday held in store a one mile timed swim. I could have gotten my butt out of bed to swim with Megan in the morning, which in retrospect would have been the wise decision. Instead, I opted to swim in the lap lane at our club's new pool. Typically, that area is not crowded but of course yesterday, I was fighting through kids and adults hanging out in the lap lane. Because they don't have the whole rest of the pool to stand in. Or the other pool for that matter. The lifeguard was absolutely no help, so I had to keep stopping to say "excuse me, could you stand on that side of the lane line?" Two of my girlfriends watched my kids while I swam, but they interrupted me a few times as well. At first, they wanted to swim with me. Then they wanted me to watch them do back flips. Then they wanted to know when I was going to be finished. I felt bad that I had promised them an afternoon at the pool but I was abandoning them. Finally, Beanie bought them ice cream so they were happy and occupied while I finished. Then she bought me a pina colada so all of us were happy!

Today was a three mile easy run. Now nothing about running is ever easy, in my opinion, but I did lope around the neighborhood at a 9:35 minute/mile pace. I actually ran without my iPod just for practice. It is annoying to hear myself pant, but I've gotten a little more used to it since my last event and can tune it out better now. I was singing the lyrics to Nickleback's "Rock Star" to myself. Or several times a Hannah Montana song popped into my head unbidden.

The rest of the week offers rest, hydration and nutrition until race day...