Under Two Weeks!

Into taper mode cutting last week's mileage by nearly 50%, 55km/ 34mi.

Tapering is always nice (you get some social life back!) but mentally, it's difficult.  The previous 13 weeks have carried a single-minded focus, building stamina.  All of a sudden that tails off and questions begin to fly.

This time, it's my hamstring.  Right now, I no longer notice it's "off" and there's less stiffness.  There's no reason to believe it will impact Tango, but racing 100km should do a number on it and I wonder how long it will take to recover.  Have to put that out of my mind and worry about it after.

photo from indulgy.com

Second, have I done enough to race over 100km?  I'm not in this to just finish.  I want to push for nearly 10hrs (hopefully closer to 9!).  In any training cycle there is always more you could have done, but in reality, there's more to life than training and racing.  This time for me it's been a move half-way across the globe and a calf injury that limited me to 16wks.  Confident I've  it my best given the situation.


H&N - 62.3kg/ 137lb with 9.8% bf, finally under 10%!  Stoked!  Feels good when all the hard work and mental toughness pays off.  Next two weeks will be clean diet but have to watch out for over-eating (even if it's healthy food).

Tapering is the point where I lost site of nutrition while training for Ironman UK.  My peak calories topped 6,000 a day so I got used to eating a ton.  Then came taper, and I failed to sufficiently reduce calorie intake.  Also, I was just below 7% bf, so that was agood excuse to give in to cravings.  The over-consumption probably didn't impact body comp too much, but I'm pretty sure it contributed to stomach problems on race day.  Those issues are firmly imprinted in my brain, so I'll try to avoid the same this time.

R&R - sleeping lots, 8hrs +, even some 10hr nights, lovin it!  Temperatures cooling off, so back on the compression gear.

As for the hamstring, as mentioned before, it's improving day-by-day.  Have been using cold spray every night and it's working.  Also, gave it an extra day rest by cutting out one interval this week which started the improvements.


As promised, more posting on target time and race day prep to come.  Getting excited!