With three weeks to go before Ironman Boulder, my primary focus is offloading fatigue. On a positive note, four weeks very solid training, culminating in one last hard weekend, has not left me feeling too fatigued. I purposely threw in a hard downhill mile yesterday in order to stress my quads one last time prior to race day. Since the tissue and cellular breakdown will take two weeks to regenerate and recover, it’s the perfect time. Fortunately, I’m only feeling a little bit of quadriceps soreness as I fly to Denver this morning. That should peak tonight, and I’m sure my legs will feel fine in a few days. I’ll play whether I run by ear in the next few days, based both on how I feel and whether I have opportunities to run. My arms are a little tired from yesterdays solid 1500 yard swim, and I’m already aiming to swim after I get home tomorrow afternoon. I can see some 5000 yard 90-100 minute swims on the horizon.
The short trip to Denver brought about another realization, altitude does matter. I was in a meeting all day, and didn’t really eat much. My body already started rebelling. Some carbohydrates and fluids helped, but I have to admit feeling a bit wiped out from the altitude. Of course, this was after a hard 9 hour training weekend that culminated in what was essentially a solid olympic distance triathlon effort. So, I guess my efforts to offload fatigue will start tomorrow when I get back to sea level! Of course, the day after, we’ll be heading back to Denver, but it will be a gradual increase in altitude over the course of a several days.
The key to a successful ironman depends on getting rid of accumulated fatigue. The challenge during the taper is to keep moving, active, and stimulated, all the while avoiding adding fatigue. And, rest and recovery literarily should allow the fatigue to dissipate. Time to go to sleep, again, one of the key elements and “workouts” during my taper.
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