Twitchy in Taper

 A couple months ago, I told Wes that triathletes seem to be a twitchy lot.  I'd been for a swim at the Y early that morning and in looking around at the swimmers in the pool, I felt like I could tell those who were triathletes and those who were just going for an early morning swim.  You see, the triathletes were, well, twitchy.  Wes asked me what I meant by that, and it was hard to articulate.  The ones I pegged as triathletes were the ones who were timing their laps and flying through their speedwork; they had bike water bottles on the pool deck as well as their workouts listed on paper and in ziploc bags so they wouldn't get wet; AND they looked like they couldn't wait to hop on their bikes.  There was just something about them, something twitchy that I have begun to recognize in myself.

Two weeks ago, I entered the 3-week taper phase of my training.  It's the last bit of training when you dial it all back to give your body a chance to rest and recover before race day.  I've posted on facebook a bit about my love/hate relationship with taper, and I know plenty of pure runners and triathletes who agree.  For reasons that are obvious, taper is a welcome relief from the long and often intense hours of training, and that certainly holds true with my Ironman training.  Taper means shorter workouts and a bit of a break on the zone 4 heart rate, high-intensity work.  In that regard, taper also means that I get a little bit of my non-training life back.  Even an hour or two gained back on the weekends translates into all kinds of possibility: long naps and much needed rest, a return to my love of baking, or even just watering the dehydrated flowers and tomato plants (the tomato plants, sadly, have not survived my full training plan, may they rest in peace). In short, taper means balance.

But taper also means faith in the training plan: faith that all of the hard work will pay off and that easing off the workouts will mean waking fully rested on race day.  Taper means rest, but when you've been going as hard and as long as you do in a full iron distance training plan, it's honestly hard to rest.  Oh sure, the first few shorter workouts in taper were great.  I felt really tired as my body began to relax into it, and I actually slept quite well.  But then I started to have (the usual) doubts about resting so much.  Somehow a 3 hour bike ride didn't seem like enough riding.  I mean, there's NO WAY that a 45-miler two weeks before the race could possibly be a good idea.   Today, a week before the race, my workout was a 1-hour run.  For months I've been doing 1-hour runs twice during the week.  THAT was my long run today?  In preparation for a MARATHON after a 2.4 mile swim and a 112 mile bike ride?  Good grief, who writes these plans?  My body has grown accustomed to the energy burn, and now it wants an outlet.  What it needs is rest, but what it wants is to go.

The love/hate relationship becomes apparent.  I relish the rest, and I fear (and thus hate) it at the same time.  What's more, I'm not sleeping well.  At all.  I need to sleep, but my body wants to go.  I've awakened multiple times in the middle of the night the past week only to find my mind racing with thoughts of, well, racing.  I go to sleep thinking of Louisville, and I wake to the same thoughts.  In case any of you are reading this blog for the first time, I feel compelled to reiterate that I am not going to win this race!  My ability to complete it isn't even guaranteed.  I will need every last minute of the day to get myself across that finish line.  Wes keeps telling me to relax and embrace the taper, but I honestly don't know how to do that.  I think I am relaxed, only to wake in the middle of the night.  What makes me feel better?  A workout.  My life has become insane.  I love it, but it is insane.

I'm not sure what kind of company Wes thinks I've been for the past couple weeks, but periodically I will say or do something twitchy-like (such as waking at 3:30am, going to the Y for a long swim, going non-stop until I meet him for lunch, and then talking a thousand miles a minute the entire time we're together), and he shakes his head and smiles.  This Ironman that I am married to knows all about twitchy taper and recognizes it in his wife.  I've given up on trying to convince him that it's not the taper effect.  It is, and I know it.  So now there is really nothing to do but wait.  I have one more week to go.  Actually, I have one more week not to go.  I plan to do my best to try to rest, relax, and soak up this last week of taper.

What I really want to do is race.  :)