Taper Time!

Yes, I have reached the time in Ironman training where you begin The Taper.  A few normal friends (i.e. not crazed endurance athletes) who follow me on Facebook have asked me "what is a taper?"  In fact, one of them asked me that when I ran into her on my 2.5 hour run today.

So, I told her the taper is when you start backing off your training to get your body ready for the big day.  She smirked "Backing off?  And you're running how far today?"

OK, OK.  Good point.  Tapering is not like taking a 3 week vacation from workouts until race day. The idea is to back off the amount of time you workout but keep the intensity.  Imagine the edge of a knife.  You want to reach the sharpest edge right before your race. With three weeks left to go, an average athlete like me can't gain much more fitness that will help me on race day.  But I can hurt my race.

As you back off your workouts, the body starts to repair all the dings and dents you've created during training.  You still have a few hard workouts every week but they are shorter.  For example 2 hours running instead of 3.  Only a 4 hour ride instead of 7. It gets shorter and shorter as race day approaches. It's not uncommon for athletes to get sick during the taper so I'm trying to avoid sick people.

The other thing that happens is what I call Taper Madness.  I've spent the last 6 months convincing myself that 4 hours isn't really a long bike ride and following that with a 2 hour run in Sunday is normal.  As my physical focus starts to relax, my brain has way way too much time to think.  About everything.  Life.  The universe.  How fast I could go on race day.  Everything that could go wrong on race day.  Which chicken you choose becomes a HUGE decision.

Basically, the nervous energy builds and builds.  It will be needed on race day but it's hard to accomodate this new mental roommate.

For Ironman Florida in 2007, the taper madness was tempered by the fact that I still had to finish my PhD manuscript.  All that energy had a place to go.  Not so much this time.  It will be a fun ride to race day. To my husband: I love you, honey. :)

So that my friends is my opinion of the taper.  Feel free to add your best stories.