Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Taper Time!?

Well, after a major case of the “I don’t wanna’s” last week…I survived. 

After my trip and fall on Thursday I felt like I’d been hit by a truck on Friday.  My entire upper body was stiff and sore.  Discomfort in my ribs (from where my heart rate monitor strap likely pushed into my body on impact) made it painful to cough and I was unable to sneeze.  A sharp intake of air was uncomfortable enough that it would stop a sneeze in its tracks.  Given all of that I opted not to swim that day as things just hurt too much.

I did survive our final 180K ride though!  The ride started out as a bit of a gong show.  We were planning on riding Highwood Pass, however more than one person told us we were crazy for attempting that route – with so much climbing – on an already hard day.  On Friday night we made the call to ride closer to Calgary instead.  We didn’t have a specific route in mind, just places to go.  We broke the ride up into chunks – a 50 km out and back to Springbank Airport, 30K out to Bragg Creek, another 10K out to Elbow Falls, return to Calgary and ride the 50 km out and back again.  This helped me to not focus on the entire distance and just think of the ride in smaller pieces.  It is the strongest mentally I have felt on a long ride so far this summer.

On Sunday I finally got that 4000 m swim in.  It actually went pretty well.  It was boring…but I survived.

And now we taper!!!!!  (If you can consider that a 14 hour training week versus a 16 hour training week is tapering….)

11 comments:

TNTcoach Ken said...

Hey, that could be two extra hours of sleep!!!!

Lily on the Road said...

So glad you didn't do more damage to yourself when you fell.

Good job breaking the ride into chunks, it is such a mind game at this point.

Wes said...

4x1000 meters in the pool. breakfast of champions! coach's instruction. swim. have fun. :-)

Alisa said...

NICE work! Enjoy the taper, stay mentally strong and you totally got this one in the bag.

Aron said...

taperrrrr!!! i am so excited for you!! a couple friends i train with are in taper for IMC now :) its been fun to watch them.

Marlene said...

Glad you're feeling better! Enjoy your first week of "taper".

Lindsay said...

what are you going to do with those extra 2 hours?! :) that ride still sounds tough to me, but definitely a little mentally easier by breaking it up. lord i can hardly handle my little 20 mile rides!

Molly said...

Woohoo for taper!!! I'm so excited for you!

Meg said...

I can think of many things to do with an extra 2 hours. WHOOT! You're freaking doing it!

RoadBunner said...

Taper time!!!!! :)

Maggs said...

woohoo! Taper time! Rest up!