TAPER TIME!!

I am officially on day 2 of my taper for IRONMAN! How crazy to be able to say that! I guess there were some parts of me that thought this would never come. Or thought that I'd never get through all those crazy long workouts to get to this point. Peak 1, Week 1 underway. Does this mean I'm at the "peak" of my fitness? I guess it does, that's the idea anyway, but it's kind of weird because I don't really *feel* any different from a few weeks or months ago.

Yesterday I got the official "Athlete Guide" for CDA in my email. I started getting crazy butterflies just reading it. Special needs bags, bike drop-off, pre-race lake swim, transition closing time... it's all getting so REAL. I guess I should buy my plane ticket up there, huh??

I also just found out that Stella has to get dropped off at the bike shop for shipping next Wednesday. That's so close!! I might have to borrow a bike for my last ride or two before I go up there, since Stella's the only one I have. And I get to use the Zipp 404s again! Courtney also offered to let me use her aero helmet, which I politely (though gratefully) declined. I am definitely not cool enough yet to use one of those things.

To recap, it's been a long couple of weekends of training. Jennifer's prediction of "eat, sleep, train" for most of the month of May wasn't far off. Not TOO far, anyway... :P

Sunday, 5/24: How much fun can you have in 8 hours? A lot, if your idea of fun is biking and running, and biking and running and biking and... The agenda for the day was a 20 mile bike/4 mile run brick, four times. I was kind of intimidated, but as I've been doing a lot lately, I told myself "the only way out is through", and got going. I admit, I was a little excited too. Plus I had some training buddies lined up which I knew would help make it fun.

Loop 1- Went with Shannon. 7am and we were off! Bike good, run good but starting to get hot already.

Loop 2- With Shannon again. WINDY on the bike and HOT HOT on the run. The icewater from the cooler in my truck at refueling stops between biking and running was sooo refreshing. Making sure to keep up on salt tabs. Was that thunder I just heard in the distance?

Loop 3- Rode and ran with Erik, who did an awesome job on his first brick. Especially considering he was riding a mountain bike so he had to work 10x harder than me. More thunder, and then some rain out at the turnaround on the bike. It started raining harder and I was scouting out places to stop and take shelter, but then it stopped. Phew. The run was good. Passed by Coach Kevin and Coach Rick's trucks at the shop for what felt like the 85th time.

Loop 4- Did the bike by myself, then rode back into the parking lot to find Erik had come back. Apparently he felt guilty leaving me to do the last one by myself, so he volunteered to ride his bike alongside me for the last 4 mile run of the day. Nice! I'll always take the company. About halfway through the run, I started to really get tired. I held up really well all day, no pain or excessive fatigue or anything. I still felt good, but like I told Erik, "I just would kinda like to stop now". Jen told me that for my last run I should imagine myself at mile 22 of the IM marathon, with 4 miles to go until the finish. I visualized that, like I often do. I imagined how I'd be tired (which wasn't hard, since I was), how I'd want to be done, but how excited and thrilled I'd be to be so close and how I wouldn't want to waste a minute of the experience by wishing for it to be over. That last run was my fastest of the day, and I ended up finishing close to my 1/2 marathon pace. DONE!! I made it! The single longest day of my IM training- success! And I had no pain anywhere, just tired.

Training totals, 5/18 - 5/24:
Swim- 8300 yards
Bike- ~160 miles
Run- 28.8 miles
Total Time- 18:13
(I missed an extra day this week because I was starting to get sick, plus I had an extra scheduled day off to prepare for the big weekend, in addition to my regular Monday off, so this was actually 4 days instead of a whole week)