10 Days Out

Today, I get to start stalking the weather report for the race.

Not super great, but it could be worse.  I’ll take the cloudy and the low chance of rain, but I’d be grateful for a 5-10 degree drop in temps and the wind calming down a little.

Either way, this is nothing I can change.  I’ve prepared in worse, so I’ll be fine, y’all.  One of these days I’m going to get perfect weather for one of these silly long distance races I like to do, but until then, I’ll conquer whatever the day presents me.

I talked in great length about the weekend here, so let me just wrap up the rest of it.

The first week of taper never quite feels much like taper, but it all went a-ok.  I had 11.5 hours planned, which seemed ambitious, so I was alright letting a little fall off.  I held on a little more than I actually expected and ended up with 10.5 hours.  I missed a little bit of cycling and one weights session.  Life will go on.

• Runs: 1 hour heat acclimation, 1.5 miles off the bike, 10 mile race easy miles
• Bike: 1-1.5 45 min effort ride (sort of), BSS ride, 50-60 mile TT ride 1h30 fighting the wind around town on road bikes, 48 mins fighting the wind commuting on cruiser bikes.
• Swim: 1 race distance (close) OWS, 1 shorter OWS
• Weights: 2 1 session
• 10.5 hours total.

I really would have liked a better race distance OWS and some more awesome TT bike miles, but I’m pretty happy with what we did.

The only bike ride of the week that went as planned…

This week is taper week #2, which should actually feel like taper.  Having multiple days off was decadent.  Having single digit hours on the plan feels positively sinful.  It’s lucky because between work and the rain, I’m having to shift my plans around a little lot but this week.  I can’t lie, I’m at three days right now with no swim/bike/run and I’m freaking out a little, but I have to remember the advice I’d give ANYONE else – it’s no big deal and it’s actually probably a decent week for life to happen.

My super-detailed plan is below:

• Runs: some miles as long as my knee stays cooperative
• Bike: Bike once or twice somewhere.  Some distance.  Maybe on the TT even if it works out properly.
• Swim: At least one open water swim that’s 1+ mile.  More if I can.
• Weights: did one session already this week.  I’m calling it here since we’re 10 days out.  Time to let the muscles rest.
• Some hours total.

Life Stuff:

Two new blue shoes (say that 10 times fast)…

I successfully obtained new cycling shoes that seem to fit (they’re a little tighter than I’m used to, but my old ones are so loose and slippy I think that’s a good thing).  I also have new Clifton 3s and I really wanted to wear them for the 10 mile run (my last long one), but with my knee twinges, I decided to go with the ones I knew.  I hope they’ll be broken in enough by the race to wear, but if not, it will probably be my last run on the previous pair (and I will have yet to break the cycle of wearing old shoes at my big races…).

Sighhhh… I don’t know why it’s been so hard for me to track calories but it has.  It just has.  I got through Monday, half of Tuesday, and randomly tracked Saturday to make sure I had eaten enough food (and at the time I tracked, I hadn’t, so it was good I did).

So far this week, I’ve tracked everything so far, so I’m doing better!  I have been hopping onto the scale every so often, and my weight seems to be pretty steady (185-188), but my body fat seems to be down a few %s.  So, that’s good!  While I’d like to have magically taken off a lot of weight this cycle, instead, I definitely put on some muscle.  In the next month, my goal is to not fuck that up with a bunch of weight gain.

I foam rolled 6/7 days last week.  I went in for a chiropractor check on Monday and she says my back is the best she’s seen it lately, so it’s working!  Yay!  I need to continue this trend through the race, it is so good for me.

I drank beer last Wednesday, and then I got sick of beer and drank whiskey and stayed up too late.  Life continued on, I didn’t miss any training specficially because of that, and I got lots of sleep the next night.  I guess the law of averages dictates when you act like a grandma 5-6 days a week and go to bed around sunset, sometimes you need to act like you’re in your early 20s to balance things out.

I haven’t quite mastered the bedtime thing yet, but less training seems to equal less sleep needed (and less residual exhaustion), so as long as I’m asleep by 10:30-11, the 7am hour isn’t too bad.  This week, I will continue the fight of early to bed and early to rise.

So, this week’s goals are:

• Early to bed/early up whenever I can without sacrificing sleep.
• Let’s stop being stupid with the having too many drinks and staying up ’til 3am, k?
• Foam roll and puffy legs and stretching and all the recovery things.
• Track the food.  At the very least, write it on a list somewhere.
• After the cleaning service on Thursday – start packing ALL THE THINGS for IM TEXAS!!!!

On this last one – holy cow.  I’ve started to make a plan for this and I just hope I can fit everything in need in our big ass Xterra.  I’ll share my neuroticisms and overthinking later this week. 🙂

Save

Save