Pay it back

I was feeling like a million bucks on Sunday, riding 140km pretty hard, running, playing tennis, socialising and just keeping on all day full of energy without a break.

Deep down inside I had the feeling I’d have to pay it all back, although in the end it wasn’t that bad. I have felt a little bit wiped out in the mornings and my legs have felt sore, but that’s about it.

I’ve tried to organise my training for this second half of the year so that I schedule in a recovery week at the end of a 3-week period of hard training in order to coincide with tapering for a race at the end of that week. It makes sense to me in theory, we’ll see if how works in practice!

So I’ve got the key races as the Sydney Half Marathon (this weekend), the Melbourne Round the Bay in a Day 210km ride (not technically a race, but I do want to be in good form for it), the Nepean Triathlon and the Canberra Half Ironman.

Tapering is so hard for me mentally, to allow myself to have the time off and not feel like I’m slacking or losing fitness. This week I’ve done nothing in the mornings so far – just slept in and played with the cats. I did a little bit of yoga at home yesterday morning before work.

Apart from that I had a short swim (2.5km) at lunch yesterday and did Pain in the Domain on Tuesday, although I did drop back to Group 2 and missed out on the last couple of sprints to try to take it a bit easier on my aching legs.

I’m planning yoga and a swim tomorrow, a longish very easy ride on Saturday and hopefully be ready with leggy freshness for the half marathon on Sunday!