Peak Week and the start of my taper!!

Well, the time has come that I have finished the most difficult part of my training and my taper starts on Monday morning. Taper? No, not that (Tapir) as you see in the picture, although that probably what I look like after the long runs and rides, my training taper which means I start reducing my training mileage over the next three weeks until the week of the race where I will be swimming only a mile and bike 20-30 miles and that’s it!!!!

The purpose is to keep all the muscles firing while starting to build up and conserve the energy that I will need to perform at the Ironman race in Kona. It definitely works and the reduced training over the next 3 weeks will be a welcomed training period after the heat and distances of this summer.

As always, there has been drama associated with this race again this week. I have never had such a hard time trying to get to the start line of any race in my whole life, as I have had with this race.

This week American Airlines called me and notified me that the flights had been changed coming back from Kona. As I talked to them I thought, OK no big deal so we have to leave 5 hours later, I can live with it. After looking at my itinerary they e-mailed me, I noticed that the change was only for Jill and the boys and I was still on the original flight.

Great, American Airlines has now split our family up. How crappy is that! I called and had intermittent phone calls with then from 4pm to 10:30 pm that day. When I called them back, they told me that I didn’t have a seat either on the original flight and there were no other seats available on my family’s new flight. After exhaustive arguments, we pushed out return date out by one day just so we could have an acceptable departure time and we were all together. As much as I am against government intervention in anything I must say that the Airlines need to be torn apart and rebuilt in the model of Southwest Airlines. Nothing further to say about this dismal industry.

Training wise this week, and health wise, I have been dealing with my foot issue this week along with the reemergence of my plantar’s wart on my foot.

My ankle hurt a lot on my 12 mile run on Wednesday. It didn’t; feel good from the very beginning of the run but I was trying to work it out and it only got worse by the end of the run. I was on Advil for the next 2 days because of it. I spoke to one of my trainers, Mike Dannenberg about it, he worked on it some, and we went through everything once more to find the cause. I have new orthotics that I am wearing to help with this issue and he told me to quit wearing them because they may be irritating the injury. So I did.

I went on a 2 mile run after the bike on Saturday and it felt good. No sign of pain at all. Mike says he thinks it is a soft tissue injury so if that is the case I may just need to warm it up a lot more than I am doing right now in hopes of alleviating the pain. We’ll try it on Wednesday of this week.

Regarding the plantar wart, it came back after it was frozen off the first time and now, even though it irritates me on the run, I think it may be too late to get it frozen off without impacting the race because it does take a while to heal. I am going to look into it this week and see what I can do.

The bike has been great. Got in my 110 miles today which is the longest I have ever ridden and my swims are going great. Last Monday I got in 2.4 miles and tomorrow I have a 2 mile swim scheduled. I have gotten to the point now on the swim where I can really put out a good solid effort for the 1 hr and 15 minutes it takes me to swim 2.4 miles.

Lastly, I have started to make my lists. All types of lists! I have a packing list, a T1 list (T1 as in transition 1 from swim to bike), T2 List (from bike to run), and I have list for my special needs bags on the bike and the run. These special needs bags are for things you may need at the mid point of the race such as additional nutrition on the bike or moleskins for blisters on the run. I always use list for tri races no matter the distance. It a great feeling knowing you have forgotten nothing. The last thing you want to have happen is to forget something that can absolutely wreck your race day and with a race this big, I want nothing to go wrong!

That’s about all for now and I am looking forward to training this week and getting psyched up for the race in 3 weeks!!!!!