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….)

Clumsy, Clutzy, Clipless

Yesterday I was working oh so hard to have my first fall clipped in on my bike.

*As a side note, maybe I should fess up to the fact that I have already fallen, way before I even got my pedals..??*

Anyhow, for the life of me, I don't know why but my left foot was having tons of trouble clipping in and out yesterday. I would keep missing the clip, sliding my foot across the pedal and having my leg shoot out so everyone around me would know that I just completely missed the clip. It was kind of like in high school when people would kick the back of your foot as you were taking a step, causing you a major big step forward that would make you look like a goof. As I approached an intersection I tried to unclip my left and it wasn't working. I was running out of time so I unclipped my right. Except my bike started to lean left. I tried to plant my right foot on the ground, my left was still clipped in and my bike was swinging out into a big wide arc. I just held on tight to the brakes trying to get the wheels to stop moving and swinging out. How I stuck that landing, I don't know as it took me a good 20 seconds of imbalance before I was sorted out. Of course there were cars waiting across the intersection watching this all go down. As soon as it was time to roll I tried to power off with my left and clip my right foot in...disastrous... Totally missed the clip, wobbled on the bike...looked like a total dork riding through the intersection. Sigh... It was a fantastic ride though!

*As for the fall, it happened on this day, the day of record snowfall. I was approaching an intersection at the end of the bike path. The snow was covering the walkway and my tire must have caught a groove as I was trying to come to a stop. I very slowly just started leaning to the right and just wound up on the ground. Luckily no one saw that one happen!*