Tapering continues

Wednesday I did my last long run- about and hour and a half out around New Glasgow. I have a bit of a mental block about running in the morning but it was beautiful yesterday (around 7 am) and I was thinking I should have done it more often in the morning. My usual running time is always after work. Tuesday night I swam with the tri group in Rusticoville. We went around 7:30 and by 8:30 it was getting dark and a bit hard to see. Today I am going to swim at the outdoor pool at Simmons and then go for a bike ride with my friend, Tyler R. for about an hour and a half. On the weekend i am doing the sprint triathlon in Sackville. That will be a fun change from always doing Olympic distance races. It will also be a good little speed workout.

August 15th weekend.

I might be tapering a little too much in that i feel like i am taking it pretty easy. This past saturday I played tennis for fun and as a bit of a mental diversion. Sunday, I did do an Olympic triathlon in Parlee Beach. I finished 14th out of about 50 competitors and was reasonably happy with my performance. Both my running and biking are a little slower over shorter distances that they were a couple of years ago but I attribute that to all the ironman training over the past 3 years and not enough short races. I used to compete in a lot of 10 k and 5 k races when I had more time. I have learned that I cannot be good at everything at the same time. I took Monday off and I seem to have a busy schedule this week socially and it will be a matter of sqeezing in workouts here and there. My program calls for an hour and a half run this week which seems long for tapering but I think I will try to do it tomorrow morning. (which is not my favorite time for running but its the only time available) Tonight I am going to try to go for an openwater swim and do around 3000m. Thursday night I am doing a bike ride with a friend for a couple of hours and then my program calls for a short brick on the weekend and then it will be the countdown to heading to Penticton the following week. I think that getting rested and eating well etc... is as important as anything at this point. I know that my ironman strength is not my speed in any of the disciplines but it is being able to keep a constant moderate pace without suffering too much and in particular being able to run a decent marathon after biking for 6 hours. The only unknown variable would be doing it in extreme heat. Hopefully that won't happen. I think that anything up to 30 degrees would be fine.