Thursday, August 25, 2011

Taper? Already?

I am sure if you would have asked me even a few weeks ago if I was ready to taper I would have told you 'hell ya! But to be honest with you, now that we are less than 2 weeks away, I feel like I could really use another month.

Now I am sure some of that is simply because with such a daunting task ahead of me, I may never feel like I have done enough to prepare.  And over-analysing my training really doesn't help because there are always gaps or areas you 'coulda, woulda, shoulda'. 

I set a goal of 12hrs for last week, seeing as I totally blew my training the week before Angel's Staircase.  Monday I fit in an easy 1hr 20min run to recover from the race on the weekend.  Tuesday I met my friend Karen for a 1.5hr run with 3min hill repeats in the middle and I followed it with a 4hr run in Crawford with Sarah on Wednesday.  Karen met me again on Friday morning for another beautiful early morning trail run and she pushed me up and along the hills for a total of 1.5hrs.  Saturday was a family day...
Karen Christie
We had an early morning start as Carter was doing the Kids of Steele Triathlon.  We were downtown for body marking by 7:10am and had his bike in transition by 7:25am.  His race started at 8:45 and he did great!  We LOVE watching Carter in his races and we are so proud of him!  He is at the age where he just wants to hang out with his friends after he finishes and after a quick hug from us, he is all about the cookies and coke in the area marked for 'athletes only.'  Trent and I gazed through the fence and saw him talking post-race stories with his fellow triathletes and clanking their coke cans together in celebration.  The days of hangin with your parents after a race may be long gone... :)

It was also my Mom's 60th birthday.  So we all had breakfast together, then I took her to the spa and we met my brother at the Kelowna Golf & CC for 9 rounds of golf before meeting back up with Trent and Carter at Mama Rosa's for dinner and vino.  It was a great day!!  I missed the first run of the fall trail running clinic and I hate to miss when I will be away soon on holidays but today was an important day for Carter and my Mom.  So I was grateful to give my family all of my attention and have a day off running and work.


Sunday I kinda blew it though.  I went out for my last scheduled 3hr run.  Only to return to home after 45 min.  I felt very unmotivated.  I was distracted with my thoughts and I couldn't stay focused on my run.  I kept thinking of all the things I need to do before I go like work and packing.  Plus my energy level was really low.  So I shut it down and I locked myself in my office until I had enough work done to satisfy my mind.  Trent was great.  He knew I was pissed at myself for blowing off my run when I have been so strict with my training and so close to the start.  So he offered to run with me at Knox before our company came for dinner.  Now anyone who knows Trent knows he hates the heat and it was 32 degrees and mega humid at 2:30pm and he was offering to get my butt out there to get some more time in.  What a guy!  Well, we did suffer in the heat (knox can be brutal this time of year) and my left ear still feels like fried bacon.  LOL  But we pushed through it.  We ended up hiking sections we might otherwise run but it just allowed us to chat more and we had a really great time together.  And he knew I would feel better finishing my last build week with the extra hours on paper and his support that day wasn't lost on me.



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