Hey team,

Here we are in the thick of the home stretch to Ironman Louisville. Last week at the “official” send-off meetings people were stocking up on all sorts of last minute supplies for race day. Hopefully the information you received makes sense and you have printed out the “know before you go” update that Barb Smalley sent out on Friday afternoon.

Seeing each of you preparing you final purchases and settling into taper last week brought a warm glow to the eyes of your coaches. We are very proud of your progress this season and are happy you came along for the ride. While Coach Nancy & Coach Dave will not be in Louisville in person, they will be there in spirit, experiencing the same pains and mental challenges as you are, but only 2000 miles to the west! Coach Doug will be alongside the team in Louisville to guide you in the final stages of your adventure. In addition, there will be several support staff there to lean on when you need them, just ask. You are about to become Jedi Knights, use the force!

This week we taper down again with only 6:55:00 of training on the schedule. Use that extra time to start packing your bags and preparing your bike and ONE bag (if you are sending one with them) to drop off at Tri Bike Transport.

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Ironteam,

Congratulations to the Vineman peeps for your efforts last weekend, let’s see some race day reports folks! And you LOU folks, awesome last week of training everyone. High pressure has settled in and it’s going to be cooking hot for the remainder of the week. Take precautions to be sure the workouts you line up are done early in the morning to avoid the heat of the day if you can. Monday is an off day, but it’s also a spare the air day so air quality could be an issue if you bump your rest day for any reason and try to get a workout in tomorrow. As always, remember to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate….

Sunday was a hot one up at the Yorty Creek swim beach where a group of Ironteamers showed what it means to “Ironman Up” and came out to swim in the pleasant waters of Lake Sonoma then headed down to Cloverdale for a challenging  13 miles of rollers in heat that reached 98 degrees by the end of the day. Way to dig deep and put this training day in its place.

Now comes the most beautiful word in training, Taper! Yes folks, we will slowly be dialing it back to get your body primed for race day. You will possibly feel a bit of pent up energy that would normally be blown off with a long run of hard 4000 yard swim set. Please only do what is on the schedule in the next few weeks. Doing more now will NOT improve your performance on race day, it will in fact prove detrimental to your day.

Spend that extra time you are not training to  begin organizing  your equipment for race day and plan a few final items for purchase at one of the team send-off meetings hosted by Sports Basement this week. If you plan to get a final tune up on your bike, get it into the shop EARLY THIS WEEK. You need time to ride it a little before you drop it off at Tri Bike Transport on the 20th (that’s only 10 days away folks) In the height of summer many bike shops take up to a week to get to your bike. Put this on your to-do list if you were planning on it. Also, if you are running on shoes with 500 miles on them, the next three weeks are a great time to break in a new pair. Just be sure they are the same model as you have been training on, it’s too late in the season to go trying a new shoe.

Finally, if you plan to get any tissue work or massage done, the next week is a very good time to schedule that. It will give you time to recover physically from the toxin release caused by such modalities and you will feel better than if you get the deep massage in the week leading up to the race. A light sports massage 5-7 days before race day is also fine, but be sure the therapist knows you want a light massage, not deep tissue work that close to race day.

In today’s message:

1) Control what you can - Mind games before race day

2) This week’s Schedule

3) Vineman Folks - When to start back up with your workouts

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