PirateGirl's group - CLOSED - Pirate ship has sailed! (Page 5)

I'll pipe up to say - I've had more "days off" recently due to being sick - and find my next day workout has been GREAT.  Given that I'm still fighting the creeping phlegm (sorry for that picture!) I feel like my workouts should be sluggish awful things, but instead I have great ones.  I've attributed that to the days off, so even though I haven't had a taper week yet - I'm a believer based on this on/off sick schedule I've had to maintain.

hopefully that made sense. 

Yep, Bill's got it! Taper allows your body to rest and your muscles to recover and be ready for the stress of race day. You want to be fully rested and ready to go hard on that day, and not be sore from a week's worth of hard workouts. Taper week should be really light and easy workouts. They are mostly "get out and move around and stay loose" workouts. As they say, you're not going to gain any fitness during the taper, but you can certainly do your body worse by going too hard. Don't worry about loosing fitness with the light workouts...you won't!

You can feel crappy during taper depending on how hard and frequent your training was. I had a 3 week taper for IM and it was horrible. I felt like I lost all my fitness, and easy workouts became really hard. I was low on energy and it felt like I hadn't trained at all. But that was just the body resting and repairing itself, getting ready for race day. Mid-week of race week I started to feel good again and by race day I was fine.

Taper time is usually proportional to the race distance. Sprint races don't require too much of a taper (1/2 week or so) while the longer races like HIM's require 1-2 weeks.

So if you feel "bad" during taper, don't worry. You're not loosing fitness. What you're feeling is perfectly normal.

Definitley! Sounds like the rest has done you good allowing you to go harder when you are well.

Hopefully you'll be back to 100% soon!

I figured we could follow the sickness tangent for a bit.

Sometimes people wonder if they should train if they are feeling like they are coming down with something. I HATE being sick, so if I start to feel bad, I start to take it easy. If a hard training day was scheduled, I flip the schedule around and push easy days up. Sometimes it's the body saying it's too tired, so I try to get more sleep and start pushing the fluids hard just in case.

If you do end up sick, do what you feel you can handle. Obviously if you are full-blown ill and the body is having a "going out of business sale where everything must GO" (as I like to call it ) then forget training. Rest and recovery is best. When you start to get out of the funk and just have a bit of runny nose, cough, etc lingering, then it's a tough call. Sometimes you can get back to it with light workouts, but you don't want to do too much too soon and relapse. I know I can't swim if my sinuses are clogged, but light running seems to help clear out those systems. Sometimes it feels like a slight cough /runny nose lasts forever, and I go stir crazy trying to wait it out.

I freaked out this year with the record flu season. The last thing I wanted was to be taken out of my key race due to the flu. I became hyper-sensitive to paying attention to my hands. I kept Clorox wipes at my desk and wiped my mouse, keyboard, and phone down every morning. I washed my hands before eating, and used hand sanitizer when a sink wasn't around. Some may call it being a germaphobe, but all I can tell you is, it worked! Everyone at my office was sick, but I made it through and I never got the flu before the race. Whew!

(Knock on wood, hoping I didn't just jinx myself. )

I got my husband healthy - then put him on kid duty so I've gotten 2 (or 3?) GOOD nights of rest in a row - not getting up for the kids and not getting up early with the kid-alarm-clock. 

Today I finally feel like I'm ahead of the sickies.  I'll do a run tonight and see how I feel.  Of course my son now has a fever... I'll deal with that as it comes.  This is NOT our typical family health!

I need to try an OWS swim in my shortie wetsuit... It's a surf-suit, not a tri suit, but I'm hoping it will work well enough for my june tri.  Do I want to be cold (72* water) or fight against the wetsuit?  maybe this Saturday the family can do a trip to the local lake and test the waters.  Hmm, I guess I should see if it fits... 2 kids have passed through this body since it was last on! 

cynthia 

Yeah, the neck is what takes getting used to. It's like that to form a seal and keep the warm water layer in and not let the cold water in. You'll find that when you swim in it, the first few times it makes you feel like you're swimming like a log. If you normally turn your head to breathe without rotating your body much, you'll find the wetsuit constricts that. It makes you pay attention to rolling your body to breathe. So in a way they are great tools for helping with swimming form.

Update on my traveling.....got to Texas yesterday late in the afternoon and went to do my daughter's bridal pics in this lovely garden.  Oh my, it was hard to not cry with every picture.  She was beautiful!  By the time we finished and got done with dinner it was too late to run. SO, got this great idea to ask my future cutie patootie son-in-law to run with me tonight.  He bit off on the offer and soon my daughter was chiming in that she wouldn't let us go without her, so we are all going to go run tonight!  It will be good to run and to spend some great time with the two of them.  Did find out that there is NO PLACE to swim in this town at all.  I'd have to get all the way to Ft. Worth so I'm glad I did my swim on Monday.  But, I'm gonna run tonight and maybe a little early in the morning. It's so hard to get the training in when we are running like mad on the wedding....but, hearing the compliments from my daughter about how good I'm looking keep me motivated! 

But, guys, I'm gonna need you to keep reminding me to train and not let anything get in the way of that no matter how important I think it is.  I can always go ride or run for even 30 minutes rather than do nothing! 

I'm so glad that I get the emails and encouragement. It's awesome.  Thanks!

Great job fitting the runs in! And you got to run with family, which is more fun.

So quiet in here. Everyone must be out training.

I've been trying to figure out ways to increase my frequency of biking into work. The problem is getting swim workouts in. There is a bus that goes from my work to the university where my Master's swim is. Then I could take the bus part way home late in the evening and just have a 7 mile ride home. There 's a little race series that happens each summer called the Summer Aquathlons (800 yd swim, 5K run) and I want to do those which are on Wed nights. So I may be able to bike to work in the AM, bike to the race, then ride the bus part way home and bike the last 7 miles. I just need to figure out how to pack my swim stuff. Paddles are nice and small, but fins are kind of big and take up room. They may go on top of the rear trunk I have. I also need to figure out how to pack my lunch. Only so much fits in my rear panniers. The cafeteria here at work is kinda gross.

Anyone else use their bike to get to work, run errands, get to workouts, etc?

wtg Big Mama on the run!  Hopefully you can get your SIL to join you for workouts your next visit too.  Make sure you put the workouts into the busy wedding week schedule NOW!

I'm beat this AM - got up and did (for me) a BIG swim workout, 750 yds.  biggest swim day ever in my life.  I'm tired. ah wait, as I type this, I KNOW why I'm beat - yes the swim may have something to do with it - but I also carried my son for 4 hours yesterday to cuddle him through his fevers.  OK, I feel a little better that the swim is not doing me in this much.  I'm still beat, but mental a little less overwhelmed.  cool.  good to sit down and write these things, the brain clicks and I learn a little more!

PirateGirl - It's been a while since I commuted with gear/lunch, but yes, is can be a juggling act.  Skip the fins the bike day workouts?  bring lunch ingredients a non-bike/swim day and leave in office?  Bike to lunch off campus to skip the groody cafeteria?

In other me-news I pulled out my dusty dusty shortie wetsuit and pulled it on.... IT FITS!!!  Maybe not quite so flattering as pre 2 kids, but it fits!  Yippee!  I am back to pre-preg weight, but it's in different places now so I didn't know how it would fit.  I have a airpocket in my lower back where the suit gaps, we'll see if that's too annoying when I try an OWS in it.

Javamom- have you gotten your wetsuit wet yet? 

Bill- have you eaten yet?  I mean snarfed a huge calorie load? 

Exactly! Tucson isn't too bad as a lot of the country, but gas is still around $3.35/gal. I was lucky and found a station close to work that's at $3.27 right now. I live 25 miles from work, so that's a lot of driving each week. And my poor Jeep's front end is having issues. I don't want to kill myself on mileage during the week, but luckily the bus stop is 7 miles from my house and they have bike racks on the buses. I could always bike the full distance in the AM and bus/bike in the PM.

I may have to break down and put the full panniers on my bike. Normally I ride with just the little trunk bag that sits on top of the rack. It has side pockets with pull-down wings that can extend if needed. But I can't pack the full panniers too heavy or else they push the back end of the bike around and it really screws up the handling. Swim gear isn't heavy, so they may work for that stuff. I might have to start getting creative with my packing scheme.

Big Mama - try looking for videos/photos on line from the race you'll do in June.  I found some youtube videos of my June race, as well as more race reports than what is here on BT --
 I was able to see what folks were wearing and understand more about the bike/run trails.  You might also see if whatever organization manages the lake tracks the water temps - many do.

I was hopeful we'd do a 8 mile bike, OWS swim, and return 8 mile bike (how cool would that be?!)  but now DH might ditch me.  I'm trying not to be too frustrated with his vacillation.  Since we have 2 kids, it's not as though I can say "screw him" and do the workout regardless.  ARGH!  Hopefully I get him back on board, happily.  Who wants a grumpy workout partner? 

Is there any groups that you can ride with, these are great for confidence and most people are eager to share thier knowledge. The two groups I tag along with have all abilities and have helped me tremendously. I just feel safer when I ride in a group. This past weekend I asked a guy what kind of cassette he ran, he told me 3.2 jigawatts, so we all learn sometime. Gearing will be different for all of us because of riding abilities and riding styles. Try to find what is comfortable for you and stay away from know it all fit racers, they are in it for themselves.

Oooo...when you coming down in June?

For the gears, you want to have a nice smooth pedal stroke. If the gear is too low, then you're mashing away. An easier gear lets your legs spin faster. You'll want to be in an easier gear for hills, and harder gears for flats and downhills.

Like the others mentioned, are there any group rides in the area? Sometimes clubs like GABA post rides on the internet, and sometimes they have beginner rides.

Anyone else sore from this weekend?

I did a running race which was one of those "kick your butt back into training" type of races. You know when you haven't been training much and you do a race and don't feel well and think "I really need to start training again to avoid this?" Yep, that was my race this weekend. Time to get back on the training bandwagon!