Taper Madness

Not sure what this rooster is thinking. Is he about to take a bath? Is he looking for a drink? Maybe he's tapping his feet impatiently, waiting for something big to happen. Like tapering for a race.

The past two weeks I've been trying to balance rest and running. I've gotten a lot of sleep, done some errands to prepare for my trip, tied up some loose ends for projects I needed to complete, and here I am. Trying to be patient.

It's been cold the past few days, we were all spoiled here in northern Colorado by the mild fall weather. Temperatures were near 70 until just a few days ago.

Monday I'll have a new blogpost up, it's the day we launch a campaign to raise funds for the Poudre Valley Cancer Center. There will also be information about how to send messages during Across the Years. I love getting those messages during the race, they motivate me more than anything else, in the middle of the night when I'm trying to push myself through the fatigue.

I had a dream the other night that I was running a 100 mile race and I decided to take a nap in a hotel room. When I woke up I had slept 8 hours and I only had 3 hours left on the time limit to finish, and 20 miles to go. Not good! I'm taking that as a reminder of being careful about my nap time at Across the Years. In 2008-09 I slept for a good portion of the event. Actually slept better than I had in months. But that year I needed it!

I want to wish everyone reading this blog a happy holiday and a healthy and happy 2011. Thanks for your readership. I have some new topics planned for early 2011 in addition to my preparation for upcoming events.

Stop back soon!

It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings

Yesterday it was 80 degrees.

This morning, another reminder that we're in Colorado, and it is April.

Two weeks from now I'll be in Florida. Today, I'll be in the sauna.

Yesterday I was exhausted, after two busy days at work. I had a huge list of things I needed to do, but I spent the whole day in a fog. I missed the Wednesday night run, I was so tired I had to lie down at 5:30 pm and then fell asleep until Dennis came home.

The only productive thing I could do in the morning was go to the sauna and sit there, in the 170 degree temperatures, according to the thermometer in there. I lasted 30 minutes. I had it mostly to myself so there was very little opening and closing of the door to lower the temperature. I started sweating after 2 minutes, so I knew it was hot. I usually start sweating after 13 minutes these days.

I'm starting to get sauna hair again. I'll chop it off after the race.

The snow is pounding down, wet heavy stuff, and it's 34 degrees outside my window, weighing the branches down on the newly leafed-out trees. I hope this turns to rain soon because I'd hate to have broken trees.

Today I seriously need to start planning what I need to pack for my race. I'm going to enjoy my day today. There is something so enjoyable about reaching the point where you're tapering for a race, even though my training this winter and spring has hardly felt like a challenge, I've done so few miles.

The agenda today includes the sauna, a weight workout, a run in this wet cold white slop at some point, and trying to entertain the Buffaloes without getting them all muddy. Yesterday I gave them a bath.

I should have known better.

Did someone say Starbucks?

Today, the 5th, is Isabelle's birthday. She's seven. Yes we celebrate our dogs' birthdays. She went to Starbucks this morning, her favorite place to go. She gets very excited when we say "Starbucks". And she got a new hedgehog for a birthday present. Later I think I will get them some doggie ice cream.

Speaking of Starbucks, I just remembered I need to get some good coffee for the road, the coffee in the rooms at Furnace Creek won't cut it and I'll need my morning fix every day. There's no real coffee I know of once we leave Las Vegas.

I'm leaving in 5 days. Every day there are plenty of little tasks. Today I organized and labeled all my running clothes and gear for days and nights in bags, made sure all my shoes were laced properly and ready to go, packed my Mt. Whitney gear, and tried to make the pile of stuff as easy as possible for the crew to manage.

Over the past week I rode my bike a lot. Today I rode to Loveland and on the way out I almost bit it at the intersection of Harmony & Lemay, but caught myself. Didn't come out of my cleats fast enough. It's been warm, everyone complaining about heat and humidity but it hasn't bothered me. The sauna was extra hot this morning. I'm still hitting the sauna twice a day and limiting my runs to about 3 miles, and I've been walking fast for another 4 miles or so in addition to running.

This is the most extreme taper I've ever done, and I'm curious to see if it will make a difference. I'm of the mindset that it's better to be undertrained than overtrained going into a race. I'm scared that I will lose some of the preparation I've done on downhills and pavement by taking it so easy for 4 weeks. The worst thing that could happen is my quads get sore during the race. They're going to be sore from the downhill at Panamint but I don't plan on running it as hard as I did on the training run. This is my Badwater "rookie" race and that means it's all a learning experience.

When I do run, it feels so good to push myself, and it's been in the 90s here and it doesn't feel hot at all. I've been running maybe 8:45 to 9 minute pace on my short little runs and it feels easy and relaxed, and I won't need to hold that pace at all during Badwater.

Other than that, just resting and staying hydrated. The taper worm hasn't been too hungry. I'm still trying to figure out where the extra 5 pounds over last year came from. Probably a combination of age and the lack of intensity (speed) in my training.

Looks like there won't be any room left in my RAV 4 once we get Ken's cooler and his stuff in there. I tried putting the big items in and it looks like we'll have just enough room to stuff all our clothes and the food and anything that won't fit inside the coolers.

I bought a water purification filter with my dividend at REI. We'll be set for Whitney. I am so tired of buying things.

Felix is kicking butt on his Tour Divide ride, he's in New Mexico now. He is very tough. He had a lot of technical problems with his bike and gear on this ride and he has perservered. Good job Felix! I sent him an email telling him to come find us in Death Valley if he's up to it after he's done! He was in Chama on the 4th of July, I think it's only another 500 or 600 miles to the Mexican border.

So, here we are, the crew is set and ready to go, we're all tapping our feet and bouncing off the walls. It's time to talk about the plan and my goals. It's really simple and comes down to this...

My goals are:
1. To have fun and share with the crew the most memorable experience yet of my entire running career.
2. To finish.
3. To finish in under 48 hours.

After that, I could write a list of progressively more detailed and challenging time goals but it really doesn't matter about the time. I'm not in this race to be competitive with the clock or the other runners, the challenge is with myself, to finish in whatever conditions and circumstances I face during the two and a half days of the race. If I'm feeling good after Panamint, of course I'll want to motivate myself to get done faster and see how many runners I can pass but at that point it will just be a mental game, and an additional challenge. Getting to the finish line is enough, even if it's in 59 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.

Dale Nagel sent me the Death Valley weather forecast over the next week and it looks like one of the days was supposed to hit 126 degrees! I'll have to keep checking. Lately it's been in the low 120s.

Sunny Skies says, No sweat, it was 133 in '03!

The Bedpost Lady & Other Tapering Tales

Tapering is a psychologically difficult time for an ultrarunner. After months of long training runs, rearranging your life and schedule, and building up to the best possible level of fitness, it's hard to switch gears and rest. You have all that energy that you've been using to put into workouts. Now you have to focus on resting, letting the body heal and recover, and being mentally and physically prepared on race day.

Losing fitness is not a concern because after years of training, your body adapts to the demands of ultras and mentally you have the ability to push through anything. It's easy to continue the high caloric intake which can lead to gaining a few extra pounds if you don't pay attention.

Staying hydrated, eating high quality food, and resting the body are your main physical concerns. At taper time you want to do light, easy workouts, starting by cutting back on mileage slightly at the beginning of the taper and dropping off progressively each week until you allow yourself nearly complete physical rest.

Taper time is something I always look forward to because of the amount of free time I have when I don't have to train. My life starts to feel somewhat normal again. I can return to doing the activities I normally enjoy that have to be cut back when I'm spending every spare minute working out in some way.

I always feel like I have more energy and I have to channel it into something or I bounce off the ceilings and walls. Fortunately Badwater takes a lot of time to plan and prepare for. I have an entire room in my house plus part of the garage taken up by Badwater gear.

Tapering allows you time to plan and organize for the event, and to mentally prepare. Some examples of mental preparation include visualizing and imagining what it will feel like to be there, seeing yourself out there running or imagining what you will feel like in your body at different times during the race. For Badwater, you need to be thinking through scenarios of what could happen and how you will deal with a challenging situation.

When you switch gears, it's important to remember that your body is fine-tuned and you don't want to do anything to upset the balance or injure yourself. Taper time is not the time to take up a new sport or hobby. If you don't usually play basketball or go rollerblading, taper time is not the time to start.

I've heard too many horror stories of people who were ready for a race where they'd trained for months and some freak thing happened. I've had a few tapering mishaps myself.

Avoid Bedposts
One year I was staying in a motel room the night before the Collegiate Peaks 50 mile run and I was sharing the room with another runner. It was late when she arrived and I heard her outside in the dark fumbling with her keys, so I got up to open the door for her. As I jumped out of bed, I smacked my leg into the bedpost. The room had bedposts on the beds and I didn't even think of it, who has bedposts?

Being in an unfamiliar setting, walking around in the dark, not a good combination. I ended up with a hematoma the size of my fist and could hardly walk the next morning, so I couldn't even start the race. After that I got called the Bedpost Lady for years, I still get teased about that and it was 15 years ago when it happened! The solution? Be careful walking around in the dark and be extra careful in unfamiliar places.

Avoid Poodles
Another time I was running a 10K race a couple of weeks before I was signed up to run a 100 Km race. I was in great shape and wanted a fast run to sharpen my leg speed. The 10K was held on city streets, and I was accelerating during the last mile of the 10K, and suddenly this miniature poodle came out of nowhere, from someone's front yard, ran between some parked cars and darted in front of me. I had no time to react.

I tripped over the poodle and almost fell on the asphalt. I caught myself, but I did something to my knee when my foot hit the poodle, and I was sore for over a week. The poodle wasn't hurt, it kept going, chasing after whatever it saw across the street. Fortunately I had enough time before my big race and I healed in time, but it could have been a lot worse. I don't know the solution to that one. Avoid poodles while tapering?

Avoid Picnic Tables
Yesterday after the Estes Park marathon, I saw some runners I know from the race circuit, and Doug and Ron from the running club were there, and Dennis came up to watch the marathon after he ran a 5K in town that morning. We were all at the food tent where they were serving breakfast burritos to the runners after the race. We got our food and sat down at a picnic table and were telling race stories.

There were 5 or 6 of us at the table and someone got up suddenly, and the table started shaking like it was going to fall apart and crash. We all jumped and watched what the table was going to do. It managed to hold together, but I decided to move to the next table over. The second I crossed the finish line, I was officially tapering.

The moral of the story is, if you see me acting strange, being generally avoidant of things over the next few weeks, understand that it's not you...I'm tapering.