3, 2: Taper

Monday May 12.  1200 yard swim.  Recovery pace.  Almost time to retire these training notes.  They've were a great learning tool for a while, in that they've gotten me into the habit of tracking and reflecting on training.  But I've stopped saying much here, so they're not doing their job as much.  I might wrap up the push to Hawaii and then let them rest until it makes sense to bring them back.

Tuesday May 13.  3000 yard swim and 22.3 mile trainer ride.  Strong pace on both.

Wednesday May 14.  6 mile run and 6 mile trainer ride.  The run was hard, but all concentrated in a one mile speed push, dropping below 7:30 for that mile (fast for me).  It was a large time drop from last time I did this, which was about 8:06 for the fast mile.  All of about a month ago.  I'm realizing that I've covered an olympic tri distance in 25 hours after the run.  Trainer time was endurance time on tired legs.

Thursday May 14.  11.4 mile trainer ride.  For endurance, wearing myself down before last hard workouts.

Friday May 15.  7.2 mile run.  I took an easy pace heading from Sibley out to Vollmer Peak and back.  It's covered a part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail I haven't been on--the section north of Fish Ranch Rd. There's some very cool views along this stretch.

Saturday May 17.  4 mile run.  The mudders first training run.  I'm likely not going this year, but the training runs are always fun.  A fastish out and back on the Nimitz trail.

Sunday May 18.  30.1 mile ride and 3.2 mile run.  Another long ride and brick at the end of a 6 day stretch of leg workouts.  Even more fun after carb crashing Saturday night.  I mapped out a route that went down Wildcat Canyon Rd and then out on Bear Creek Rd.  The climb in this direction is long.  Continuing on Happy Valley Rd, I again found myself on a rather hard climb.  I walked a short stretch, since it'd probably defeat the training point of the ride to force through it--I wanted to keep a good pace until the final climb.  The ride down into Lafayette was fast and fun, and I continued through to Moraga and back home.

Monday May 19.  Rest.  Packing for travel.

Tuesday May 20.  More rest.  Packing some more, and I was crunched for time, and still physically tired.  I picked up calorie intake to get past an energy slump.  

Wednesday May 21.  7x200 swim.  Moderate pace with an occasional fast 25 thrown in.  Tapering now, I'm going to let overall efforts and durations drop, but mix in short fast sprints.  But the bike has been shipped, so there's not much more to do on that end.

Thursday May 22.  5.7 mile run.  Really closer to 6.2, but the GPS took quite a while to wake up.  Easy pace with strides going out to the marina and back over lunch.  I hit some pretty fast paces (6ish) for short periods of time without feeling winded.  But my feet still felt sore later.