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August 20, 2007

Mmm... Tapery Angst

Last week was, to put it mildly, not a good week. I ran a horribly slow 5K on Tuesday night during which I got eaten up by every single bug in the Chicagoland area. My legs felt dead, heavy, and slow. I followed that up with an equally horrible swim on Wednesday night - the water was rough, I was getting dizzy and overheated in my full-sleeved wetsuit, and I was considering it a success if I made it more than 50 yards before inhaling a mouthful of water. This was, of course, after I had to exert a Herculean effort to even get my butt down to the beach for the swim. We won't even talk about the confidence booster that came from the fact that, once again, I got dropped within a minute of the group starting the swim, or the fact that by the time I dragged my sorry ass out of the water everyone else had dried off and changed out of their wetsuits. I know I'm not a speedy swimmer by any stretch, but I just didn't need that reminder that night that I am still that much slower than everyone else.

When I got home Wednesday night, all I could think was how screwed I was for the race. I haven't swam in the lake enough. I'm still scared of rough water. I don't feel like I've made any speed improvements at all over the past few months, especially in the swim. I have no idea what my race day strategy is, how long it's going to take me to finish the race, or even how I want to handle my nutrition, as I've only done a few workouts that were longer than 90 minutes, and 90 minutes is vastly different from 4 hours when it comes to that sort of thing.

I was hitting new levels of cranky and grouchy, so I did what I could: I went home. I showered and put on my PJs. I had a beer. I had dinner. And I went to bed and got a good night's sleep.

Thursday was a rest day, so I slept in, hung out with The Boy, and tried to not think about any of this race or training crap whatsoever.

Then on Friday, something miraculous happened - I got up at 5 a.m. for a brick workout (run-bike-run), and while I really didn't want to get out of bed, I wasn't overly tired. I got up. I got dressed. I got my bike stuff set up for a quick transition. And then I went out and had a really good workout. Sure, I'm still running a lot slower than I was last year, but whatever. It felt good, which made me happy. Then on Saturday I got up and had a really good run. And yesterday? I had a really good bike workout - the rain pushed me from the bike path to the spin class at my gym, but it was exactly what I needed, as I left there feeling pretty good about everything. Maybe Sunday's race won't be the fastest Olympic distance tri I'll ever do, but it'll be good. I can feel it. And that's really all I can ask for.

So I'm just going to chalk last week's hissy fit up to the tapering, and move on. I've got an expo to go to on Saturday, and a race to kick butt in on Sunday. Bring it.

Posted by Dawn at August 20, 2007 07:56 AM