The (early) Taper

(Summary of June 24 - July 13)

So I kind of started my taper for IMLP a little early. About three weeks too early. 

The short of the long is that during the bike portion of Syracuse, I experienced quite a bit of back pain -- and quite a bit the days following. After seeing my physio and telling her about some symptoms that arose during the race, the hypothesis was that I had aggravated a disc. This was causing some swelling, which was pressing up against some nerves, which was radiating pain throughout my lower back. So I decided to take the week off in the hopes of fixing the problem and getting rid of the pain completely.

The following week I continued to take it easy ... finding it hard to get back into training and feeling a little gun shy about getting back on my bike. Near the end of the week though, I started to come out of my funk thanks to an invite from my tri-mom. (a term of affection I use for a woman who I have trained with here and there over the past few months and - although not actually old enough to be my mom - has provided me with a lot of tips, advice, and reassuring words along the way. I’m very appreciative of her support). Anywho, my tri-mom invited me to join her and some of her friends for a beach-to-beach swim Friday morning. 

Beach to beach is pretty much that - a swim from one beach (Blanchette) to another (O’Brien) at a local lake (Meech). It’s perfect training for IM triathletes because it’s the exact distance of the IM swim component : 3.8km. 

I was a little nervous as I had never done the distance yet, even in the pool but, I figured I would just take it one stroke at a time. And I did. And I finished. I ended up doing it in 1h53. A little slow to be honest. I had expected something more like 1h40 but given it was still within the 2h20 limit, I was happy. This happy feeling stayed with me through Saturday when I completely my longest run to date: 2h45, and in the sweltering heat no less. I was back in it. Or so I thought. 

Monday rolled around and I was sneezing all day. For me, that typically means I’m getting sick but I chalked it up to ghost symptoms as a result of my taper. Tuesday though I started getting congested and coughing so I figured my body was actually fighting some sort of bug. Gah! Wednesday: still congested, sounding worse but was supposed to do another beach to beach swim so hoping I would burn out whatever bug I was fighting instead of making it worse, I went for it. It didn’t feel that bad. My time was still about the same. And come Thursday, I didn’t feel worse, but I also didn’t feel much better either. So I took Thursday/Friday off. 

And there you go. Three weeks gone, with not much training, when they likely should have been my peak training weeks. If truth be told, I was freaking out, thinking that this would result in a premature end to my IM experience.