Taper Time

My 70.3 is in a week and a half and it's taper time. I've only had a couple "real" tapers, a couple two week tapers for 70.3's and a couple one week tapers for half marathons. I can say there is a difference, at least for me. At the start of the two week taper, my legs are absolute toast and 3 mile runs feel like there is no way my legs can carry me 10 more miles, specially after already being on the race course for four hours. Then comes the niggles, aches, pains, and other injury type feelings in a bunch of new places all through my feet, ankles, calves, knees, quads, hamstrings, etc. you name it, and during taper it's going to develop a brief bout of feeling like a race ending injury just popped up. I think it is just the body repairing the cumulative damage that months of training has inflicted on my body, at least that is what I hope. Then there are the thoughts, "did I do enough?". Well, if I didn't, it is what it is. Some like to say the hay is in the barn. I'm feeling pretty good about my base training. A quick comparison against what I did for my first half Ironman shows ...

NOLA 2011

Door County 2012

My conclusion? First, It is tough to compare graphs of different scales. Second, don't look at your graphs a week and a half out from a race :-(. Seriously, it looks like my knee injury hurt my base building period significantly and joining an extreme fitness class hurt my already pathetic swim volume significantly. I guess comparing the graphs is valuable, even if you don't like what you learn.

So besides the taper madness, I've had some other issues leading to the need for taper and rest. After my last tri, I developed an extremely runny nose that I'm not sure if it was allergies or a cold (I'm still not sure). This lasted for 3-4 days then turned into an extremely gooey nose that as kind of thick and caused snot rockets to be gooey stringy messes like two year olds get. This lasted for 4-5 days. Then it moved into my chest where it currently resides. I think it's getting better and fear it's too late to do anything about it anyway. Besides the cold, I had some lower back pain for a couple weeks that seems to be on the mend. Besides the back pain, I've been extremely busy with travel, work, and house guests.all good stuff, but none very good for rest and recovery. Besides the business, I finally stopped denying I have athletes foot and started treating it. I've had peeling, cracking feet for a few months and wrote it off as being due to doing exercises on a rough pool deck with my wimpy feet. Well my skin started getting thicker and itching and burning. It finally reached a peak on Saturday and after some self diagnosis on the interwebs, came to the conclusion I have athletes feet. So I bought cream for my feet, a liquid for my toe nails, powder spray for my shoes and Epsom salts and started treatment.

Shoes after being sprayed with powder. I did take pictures of my feet, but spared you.

So in my research I found out that I violated every rule I could find about avoiding athletes foot. So, don't be like Mike and do the following:

- keep your feet clean and dry

- wash your feet with soap every day including between your toes

- completely dry your feet after they are wet including between your toes

- wear clean socks

- let your shoes dry out between each wearing

- always wear pool shoes or sandals at the pool and in the locker room.



I did none of these and went further by wearing dirty socks to work out, sometimes still wet. I figured when doing two a days, why not? Well now I know. I also use to wear cycling shorts multiple times until last weekend. Turns out the same grunge can end up in the nether regions. Who knew? The not re-using bike shirts was a precautionary change. No jock itch here :-).



I also did some research regarding peeing in the shower preventing athletes foot. Well, it doesn't, and I have proven it by peeing in the shower every day for at least a year (don't tell my wife :-)) and still getting athletes foot. Before you knock peeing in the shower, entire countries are recommending its citizens pee in the shower to save water. Plus, it saves time :-).



Ok, enough about that. Back to tapering......

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