As many of you know my triathlon is next week. It’s also on a Wednesday AND it’s a night. Pretty bizarre right? Well, the scheduling also made tapering strange. I prefer Monday’s to be my rest days and I like to do my long runs on Sundays. I decided that rather than trying to structure a specific taper to fit my schedule, I would just taper intuitively by listening to my body.

So far it’s looked like this:
Monday- OFF + bike to work and doctors office (7 miles)
Tuesday- 4 mile run + 1,650 meter swim (intervals) + bike to work (5 miles)
Wednesday- 6 mile run + bike to work
Thursday- 6 mile ellipitcal + bike to work
Friday- 4 mile elliptical + 1,650 meter swim + bike to work

As you can see the last two days I’ve “chosen” to elliptical instead of run. There are two reasons for this (a) The back part of my right foot has felt tender the last week or so. I think it has to do with my bike and how my foot falls on the pedal so I’ve started wearing my running shoes while I bike and then I change into work shoes at the office (b) I wanted to be proactive and prevent a potential injury. I also don’t have access to ellipticals in Michigan and will be there until Thursday so I figured I should take the break sooner rather than later. I’m honestly not too worred about the foot. It doesn’t feel anything like my heel fracture and I don’t think its running related but I still want to be careful.

For someone who is a planner, I can’t believe that I’m okay with doing any form of intuitive training. For all of my long race I’ve always set out a training plan and stuck with it regardless of anything else but for some reason being more relaxed this time just feels right.

I’m hoping to get in an abbreviated brick workout on Saturday, a good 5-6 mile run on Sunday, and then another swim on Sunday or Monday. I may also jog a few miles on Tuesday just to keep my legs loose but we’ll see how all the body parts are feeling.

Have you ever trained or tapered intuitively? What did you think?

Eats have been pretty typical. I’m going to be out of town until next Thursday and Ian will be gone this weekend so I’ve been trying to use up the produce in the fridge.

Yesterday I had a bowl of puffed millet/brown rice cereal with fruit for breakfast. I’ve been using a blend of almond milk and rice milk in cereal and it’s delicious. Definitely worth trying.

Lunch was brown rice bread spread with avocado and topped with strawberries. I also had snap peas on the side with the last of the avocado half.

Snacks were dried figs and a peach. I can’t believe how good the peaches are right now!

Dinner was arugula, mixed veggies (carrots, mushrooms, snap peas, zucchini), and tilapia

And dessert was an apple pie smoothie with pea/brown rice protein powder.

Alright I’m off to work and then headed home to Michigan. Have a great day!