Week 13 - Tapering

     So my 1st half marathon is 9 days away (Sunday the 18th) everything I read says I should start tapering down my running 2 weeks away so like a good newbie I started tapering down. I ran a 8 mile workout at about 85%. An then did my normal 5 mile race pace and felt amazing but then wanted to start pushing it and have been fighting the urge to not taper. I've realized in my training that I'm a horrible student when it comes to following a training plan.

     I come from a martial arts background and had an amazing Sensai/Mentor who understood me. His way of training was unique to his elite athletes. I was always trained by outcome so he would give me a goal or problem without any set workout plan.

(Example)
Be able to last in a Elite Black Belt Olympic Qualifier. Which is 8-10 Opponents with each match lasting between 1-3 rounds each at 2 minutes per round, spread over 2 days.

his set work-out was
- Circuit work out with 3 machines
- 1 minute on each machine with 75% weight max as many reps as possible in a minute
- No break between machine with a 10 minute break between sets (5 sets)

This workout would be done every other day with a 3 day rest period before the tournament

That workout in my blackbelt handbook and I never used it as a work out. (great workout, Lots of  friends had lots of success with it)

So I would spend time during my weekend to figure out what I believed it would take my body to be ready for the same task. Here is how my thought process worked and still does

I need to be able to go the max of 3 rounds times 2 minutes per round against 10 opponents
So my work out looked like this

- 2 Minutes and 30 seconds of Wooden dummy Punching
- 25 Push-Ups 50 Crunches
- 2 minutes and 30 seconds of weighted dummy blocking
- 25 Push-Ups 50 Crunches
- 2 minutes and 30 seconds of Wooden dummy kicking

Then a 5-10 Minute Break and repeat 4 more times

I did this once a day five days a week for 3 weeks and took 2 days off before a tournament

My thinking was if i pushed as hard as I could 100% during each workout and lasted an extra 30 seconds longer then even needed for each round that during competition I would have enough juice to last all the rounds of competition.

even by the end of the 3rd week I never finished a workout at 100% I was juiced, I would leave nothing in the tank and always pushed myself to crazy limits.

     That season I went undefeated never went past a 2nd round with anyone and never had more then 8 opponents in any tournament. So I did the same exact thing 3-4 weeks out for each tournament. I pushed myself like this for 3 years and was always sore and ended up injured and choose to compete injured (never a good idea)

     I stayed away from all sports for a few years and just 13 weeks ago picked up this Ironman goal and am consistently fighting the urge to push the limits and leave nothing in the tank so every time I'm running I try to set a new PR instead of just working out. One of the hardest things ever is to do a workout at 70%-80% speed when I just want to do everything at 100%. I try and remind myself about injury and that some workouts need to be slower and I should taper before a race but all I want to do is run at 100% every time. This is an ongoing battle and part of my Ironman process. Wish me luck I most likely wont post again until after my race...


My next post will have a race summary, and a review of all the stuff I used and how it did or didn't work during my half...