Taper taper taper taper taper

I love taper! So I took a swim last night (and then picked up the bike I'll be commuting with! It's a used bike I bought off of a tri team teammate) and a short easy run this morning. I am the luckiest girl in the world to have the most supportive fiance in the universe when it comes to supporting my training. He's currently in Florida on business right now but we Skyped a bit before I left for my evening swim and he gave me a great pep talk and made me promise to think back to that conversation when things got tough in the swim and it really helped me pull through during the set.

I'm not very happy with where my swimming has been recently. I think the combination of long course practice and injuries has left me very willing to be not aggressive about the training and I can feel the changes and slips in my technique that are making me very slow even when I try to go fast. I went on pretty conservative easy pace times for this workout and I was still feeling like the interval was pretty hard, so I really need to change that. I need to make more of an effort to inject serious speed into my workouts (read: more lactate threshold work, more short short sprints) and commit to some of the pain that comes with fast 200 sets as well. The balance and thoughtfulness has been sort of missing from my training, so I know that's something I'll need to work on in the winter to get back to where I want to be. But I sort of let it go because it's taper. The practice was a bit shorter distance wise, a bit boring set wise, but I went in there and did what I had to do so I'm good with it.

Yesterday's PM Workout: Rec swim @ the Danforth AC.
Summary:

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 3 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 4 x 100 IM @ 1:45
• 3 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 4 x 100 IM @ 1:45
• WD: 200 choice easy
• Total Distance: 3200 SCY

Hit Rate: 60/66 (90.9%)

This morning I took an easy recovery run. It was outrageously slow, but I guess that's what easy recovery runs are supposed to look like. It was raining and dark out because the sun keeps rising later and later, but I'm glad I got out there and did what I had to do.

Today's AM Workout: Easy run
Summary: 3.28 mi, 33:21, 10:10 pace.
Hit Rate: 61/67 (91%)

Tomorrow is going to be a nice full day off, I'm trying to really focus as much as I can on getting schoolwork dealt with while I sort of have time for it. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks with racing taking up most of my weekends, so I need to be as efficient as I possibly can. Random updates:

• Brian is lending me a team tri suit to race in if I want to use it. I haven't decided if I'm going to yet because I'm afraid of swim related drag, but the thought of having a chamois is also nice, so...tbd.
• I need to go to Big Shark tonight to pick up gels and some random things for this commuting bike.
• I just spent like 2 hours chilling with my old lab mates and it was totally unplanned and definitely cut a solid chunk out of my day (time I really should have spent working...) but it was also really relaxing and definitely something I needed to help get me through. Remembering that you can't just hammer all the time, both when it comes to training and life in general. The recovery is just as important.

Yay that's all I have for today. Looking forward to the rest tomorrow and a final tune up ride or run on Friday morning before we roll out for Innsbrook! So pumped (:

Much love,

Jess