My taper was torture. It always is. My body feels terrible, my digestive system gets thrown out of whack, I am tired all the time, I get very cranky, and I doubt myself. My poor coach got several emails to the tune of don't be dissapointed if I am slow at halfmax. My husband had to listen to me say I didn't like to race. To which he responded that I was full of nonsense. Anyhow we all survived the taper week.
Saturday morning I woke up feeling pretty good. I did my warm up run and my legs felt 100% recovered. Something I had not felt in a long time. That combined with the fact that I had not really done a workout in almost a week I was very excited to race. The announcer said the swim would be wetsuit legal! Thank goodness as my swim training has been weak and I needed any advantage I could get. I then headed to port-o-john(I have a fear of these things, like seriously a real fear), upon my return I see almost everyone is out of transition and crowded around the announcer. Which seemed odd. As I walk past a couple people I overhear them say that the swim is CANCELLED. Yes, very good news for me. But in my opinion pretty sad given that it was a national championship.
The race director decided to do a random tt start. Allowing athletes to line up however they wanted, this he hoped would cut down on drafting. I found it dissapointing as I wanted to race the girls in my age group and would have preferred if we all stated at least within a few minutes of each other. I lined up at the very front as I just wanted to get the race going and stop standing around in the cold!
I quickly got on my bike and settled into my zone much quicker than I thought. My nutrition was a bottle of efs liquid shot mixed with efs sports drink totalling about 500 calories. This works perfectly for me as it is mild in flavor and provides calories and electrolites. The course was a two loop H, with too many uturns to count but it was easy to break down mentally. Final bike split was 2:31. PR! I have laid down some strong bikes before but never been able to run after them so I was excited to see what my legs had.
I ran into transition, grabbed my efs liquid shot and team Trakkers visor and head out to run. I decided not to start my watch and just run off heart rate. I didn't want to know my pace because I had no idea what to expect and knew that running off from my heart rate would bring my best result. The first mile felt good so I turned my watch on knowing that my pace was strong enough to not effect me mentally. The run felt great! I was able to execute my race plan perfectly. I think the cool temperatures really helped with this. Run time was 1:43:30 for a total bike/run of 4:17.
I was pretty happy with the results of my race. It's the first time I have put together a run and bike split in the same race. I hit my heart rate the whole time which is also a first. That is all I can ask for.
Now..... I recover..... I am signed up to do triple t next weekend so I have lots of recovery to do. I will be spending the day on the couch with my saucony compression tights on. The day will also likely include some stretching, mt. biking, a walk, a massage, and some stretching to help aid the recovery. Since triple t is just for fun coach has me official in the off season which calls for four weeks of cross training and "eating like a piggy." Seems odd to me. But the biggest thing I have learned this year is to trust him, but that is a whole other post! Any suggestions for the cross training..... my husband has already taken over the wii!
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