Taper...let the head games begin

Well for the past week I have been on Taper mode in preparation for my upcoming Self supported marathon. This is key for helping your body recover and heal from the massive amounts of training you do for a race. The idea being that your body will be fresh and energized on race day. This is good. The downside is that tapers in general seem to universally suck. There is a game your head plays on you it goes like this:

Your head: " cutting back this much for SOOOOO long!! You will lose ALL of your Fitness!!!!"

You say : "NNOOOooooooooo"

Your head: " didn't that walk feel so much a harder!!? Your losing it!!"

You say "NOoooooooo!!"

Your head: "Its not too late! You can save yourself! Go out right now and do 15 miles!!..........UP Hills!!........Really Steep Hills!!!"


Your head: "Hmmmm...but Coach says I should take it easy...But what hurt can ONE set of hill repeats on a 20% grade hill do? Who would know? .....NO!!!! MUST.......STICK.....TO ......PLAN!!!!!! I MUST TAPER!!!!"

And so on and so forth.

Very dramatic isn't it? If you put a microphone in my head you would hear lots of screaming and sobbing. It magnified with the echo because there is lots of empty space due to the fact that little else going on in there ;)

Its hard. But there is one positive. For the next few weeks I will have time to pay attention to the wife and to projects around the house. Thus I am practicing my paint stroke instead out on my BRAND NEW Cervelo practicing my pedal stroke :(

Oh well.