Tapering, Counting Down, and Mental Training

I honestly think that hardest part of this race is going to be the mental part. While I am pretty good at pushing myself and mentally preparing myself, this is going to be an event that is beyond anything I've done before. It's so exciting. I started re-reading the chapter of Going Long that talks about mental training. Apparently at the start of a race people either think that they have not trained enough and they are going to fail or else they think that they are #1 and they are going to win their age category. I think I fall in the middle somewhere; I believe that I have trained to the best of my ability and knowledge at this point in my life. Sure, I could have trained more this winter and summer, but I had good reasons not to. So I'm focusing on the fact that I am ready and WILL finish this race. They have some interesting techniques in the book that I haven't tried and would like to incorporate in my training in the next few weeks as I start to taper on the amount of training.

I have a really hard time with tapering. I'm sure most triathletes do. The idea is that one doesn't tire out before the race. It makes sense, but I'm not cutting down on my training a whole lot until next week. The weekend after this one coming up is a 'C' race. Last year it was my A race, but this year it has been demoted to C because I am basically using it as a really intense brick workout. It ensures that I taper correctly before the triathlon because I'll taper for the race, recover from the race, and then keep tapering for Ironman. So while my quantity of training is decreasing, I'm hoping to keep my quality of training at a high standard.

Yesterday morning I went for a wonderful run in the morning. I've been training in the heat to mentally prepare myself for the "I'm going to die in this heat" that I will be thinking during the race, but I decided to give myself a break and just do a run that I enjoyed. And I did. It was GREAT! I did a nice tempo 40-minute run and it was just wonderful. Now I remember why I love this sport... I get to do all of my favorite things! I don't even have any stats for it right now, I just went and it felt good. Maybe that's a stat in itself.

Only 25 days to go!