Tapering 08/18/2009
 
I hate tapering.  My body always starts to get cranky when I start my taper, my body seems sore, and by the end of the taper I'm anxious and ready to bust down the gates. 

Tapering is a pretty individualistic thing but for me it's about a slow reduction in volume and intensity.  So for exampe three weeeks ago I put in 21 hrs of training, two weeks ago I put in 19 hours and last week I put in 13 hours which was the beginning of the taper.  I still did some hard efforts including a longish run on Saturday with hard tempo.  This one of those confident booster runs, 15 miles the first hour at low end aerobic effort (for me it was sub 140 bpm HR and around 7:20 mile pace then crank it up for the last 45 minutes which I was holding 6:35/mile pace at 158 bpm.  My race threshold HR for the marathon in the ironman is right around 161 bpm anymore than that and I'm cooking the engine.  So what does all this tell me?  If I'm having a good day, good energy, body loose, hydrate well, fuel well on the bike and don't go anaerobic on the bike much I should have a good run in me.  It won't be 6:35/mile pace but I don't think low 7's is out of the question.  That's a lot of variables however. 

My bike power and endurance is there and my swim should be a good one based on my workouts and other races this season.

This week I really back off the volume as I'll drop to 10-11 hours of total activity, while maintaining a bit of longer workouts (not really long) and some intensity workouts but these are much shorter than normal the goal being to keep the muscles firing and sharp.  This was a problem at Kona last year.

Next week will be much lower volume but it doesn't dry up as I'll still be doing workouts and keeping some short intensity in there.  Most of all I'm getting really religious in my eating and hydrating the next two weeks. 

Other than that I'm picking up the last few things I need for the race, my bike is in the shop getting some much needed TLC so I hopefully don't have any problems on race day and I'm getting all of my race stuff laid out so I know I have everything I need and starting to glance at the forecast so I can get an indication of what the weather is going to be like on race day. 

The reality is that I like to race with as little as possible in my transition bags and on my bike.  Just keep it simple.   

More updates to come with pictures hopefully.