Thursday, April 19, 2007

Is it Taper Time Yet!?


AnotherFridaySwim
Lone late afternoon swimmer warming up. Aquatic Park and Alcatraz, visible from Hyde St. - those are cable car tracks. Enjoying a de-caf latte on the walk home after another great swim, Crookedest Street behind me.


Train, train, train, train is all I've been doing. Those two short races (9k and 10k) were fun but I'm itchin to go long. Ready for something meatier. Reading about all the races in the blogs and talking with friends who just completed events has got me all fired up. Time's moving fast though. Another Friday just like that and I was at Aquatic Park again, enjoying the water...brrrr...colder than usual today. Soon it will be time, time for my first big event - 3 more weeks.

In the meantine I'm burning myself again. Haha such a delicate act of balancing the whole training thing. Had to throw in an extra rest day on Wednesday to help myself recover. On Tuesday I "suffered" at Track. Got the workout done, even looked decent doing it but I was dying on the inside. You guys should have heard me "gassing" on the track. I heard a gasping type of breath I ain't never heard before. So Wednesday I took off completely, had a couple of pints of the good local stuff with a buddy and attended a lecture at the Apple store...some web interactive/advertising guru. Paid off cause I felt energized Thursday and Today.

Anyway one more hard week of training and I will be tapering. Originally I wanted to treat the Wildflower Long Course Triathlon as just another training race but I've changed my mind...now I want to do my best on this race. The following weekend is the Quicksilver 50M and I plan on being there as well. So with those two races coming up I've decided to do a proper taper. Last year this time I made the same decision for the Miwok 100k and ran the best race of my life. Besides I'd hate to be wheezing out there like I did at track Tuesday.

Tomorrow an abbreviated workout because of a wedding in Sonoma later in the afternoon but Sunday, since I have a car for the weekend, I've got 5-6 hours of running planned on the Dipsea Trail. That's one amazing trail. If I could only train on one trail this would be it. A lot of the things I like and not a whole of the things I don't; downhills and lots of them, tricky technical sections, trees (young Redwoods), the ocean and amazing views.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

6 comments:

  1. Happy taper Time!! enjoy the wedding tomorrow and the run beforehand :-)

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  2. Steve: I've got the Wildlflower Long Course race in 2 weeks and the Quicksilver 50-Miler the weekend after that. The Headlands race is a loonnng ways away, much should happen before then.

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  3. Enjoy the taper. I think the extra rest will do the body good. And if not, no taper next time:)

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  4. Yes, it's taper time. I'm finding it challenging to stay sharp for the marathon with Wildflower looming one week later.

    Enjoy your Dipsea run. I agree with you- it's one of the best trails anywhere.

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  5. I am on to some type of taper (?) too for nextweek:) May be. Undecided yet.

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  6. Fantastic pictures, as always, Rick! That is a gorgeous city.

    You've got some big events coming up very soon. Good luck, and have fun!

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