Monday, July 06, 2009

TELL ME I CAN DO THIS!


Its taper time, and that means of course that the doubts start setting in: How am I really going to swim with all those people? Should I wear my wetsuit? Can we wear wetsuits? Did I bike enough? Did I run enough? And what about the heat? Maybe I'll just do the swim and bike. On and on it goes. I know everyone goes through this before a big race, and I'm no exception. Somehow I know I have to at least attempt to get through it.


I know its a big mind game and this week I'm going to have to get my head into this race. One thing I like to do before a race I haven't done before is go over the bike and run courses, check stats on other women in my age group in previous years, weather forecasts, etc. The website is really not helping calm my fears in that there are no links to anything useful, as far as I can tell. The only thing that really prompted me to sign up for this race in the first place was close proximity to home (less than 4 hour drive, hopefully) and timeframe fitting in with other training and racing plans this year. I've steered clear of it in the past because its a notoriously hot, hot race, and that seems to be everyone's biggest complaint. And me and the heat just don't do that well together. So of course I'm worried about that too!


I was finally convinced last week to taper, taper, taper, and after finding myself SO TIRED last week, I realized that was the right advice. I'm still not totally caught up on fatigue, but hopefully that will alleviate as this week goes on as well. And I'm just going to suck up the fact that having my granddaughter overnight Saturday to Sunday didn't get me much sleep either, as she was teething and had a fever all night and was fussing and kept me up from 4 am to 6 am. But she's so adorable, who can resist??

So this weeks its all easy, just keeping the legs and muscles moving and hopefully loose. A second massage tonight, after last week's torture fest. I was so tight in the neck/shoulders and ITB that she worked an extra 20 minutes on me, and 2 days later I felt like I was bruised things were so sore. I need to make sure the low back is in good shape and the legs to hopefully get me to the finish line without any lasting problems. After that, its on to Phase II of training!

9 comments:

SWTrigal said...

YOU CAN DO THIS! I know 'cause I just did one-you can too!!
Good luck Vickie and have fun!!
(and have those grandbabies too-way too cute)

Marlene said...

You can SO do this. You have put in the training. You are ready!!!

ONEHOURIRONMAN said...

You can't under estimate the power of R&R before a race. You have it in the bag.

Unknown said...

Yay for tapering. Sounds like normal questions leading to a big race. :-)

Sunshine said...

Granddaughter: darling and precious!
Thanks for the interesting museum tour.
You are a marvelous athlete: wishing you the best of performance and fun next weekend.

ShirleyPerly said...

You definitely can do it, esp. having done Steelhead last year, which I heard was tough even with the swim being cancelled. Whenever I want to take the pressure off myself at a race I like to view it as just another long training day.

Stay hydrated and good luck. Also, cute grandchild!

Lily on the Road said...

You're ready, do you have a good support team going with you? They are great to have!

It is a training "tri", so go and enjoy, find your strength from within...you can do this, because there is something bigger on the horizon!

Unknown said...

YOU CAN DO THIS!

Anne said...

I think I could put up with a couple of hours without sleep for that cutie (though I guess she isn't as cute when she's teething). Put those pre-race jitters to good use. You'll do just fine. Really.