Race Prep and Other Miscelleny

Taper week!  Well, sorta.  Sunday's Oly is really a training race so I'm not doing a true taper.  Workouts this week are easier.... 3(ish) mile track workout tonight, 60 min bike tomorrow, 2 pre-race bricks (each about 50 minutes long). 

Saturday will consist of packing my stuff up, heading down to Kemah for the manditory check in and transition set up.  This race is a bit different, as they do body marking the night before and they make you leave your bike in transition overnight.  My friend C has been gracious enough to let me stay at her mother-in-law's house down by Kemah, so that saves me a hotel or 2 x 100 mile round trip drives.  And I get race company :)

Sunday's Oly consists of:

• 1500 m swim, where the bring you out on a boat 1500 m and you swim to shore.  I'm in the last wave, which sucks, because I get to weave my way through all the old men.  I hate that.  My coach and I have also decided to sandbag my swim a bit.  I'm usually top 10% out of the water in the swim, but I'm thinking I could slow down a bit (say 75% effort as opposed to race effort), saving energy for the run later but still putting in a respectable swim time.  I'll try it and see how it goes.  Instinct (or hubris) may take over though and I'll go faster.  We'll see.
• 40 km bike (25-ish miles).  Pretty simple course, except for this stupid bridge we have to go over, do a sharp cloverleaf turn, then go under, do another sharp cloverleaf turn to go back OVER the bridge.  Lame.  Other than that, bike should be simple.
• 10k run (6.2 miles).  Key here is to stay in zone 2 early on and save some for the last 2 miles.  Temperature will be warmer, so the key here is to control my heart rate and my "its hot, I hate heat" attitude.  When I'm hot and cranky, my running suffers.  I need to get over that before LoneStar.

Next week is a partial recovery / partial heavy week, in preparation for LoneStar.  The following week is a true taper.  Woot.

May will be interesting, as that's my training month for the Boise 70.3  Team Erin will be headed up to Chappell Hill as much as possible to get in some hills.  And my coach has promised me a "hell week".  7 straight days of killer workouts, which should get me set up for Boise.  Should be interesting, to say the least....