Getting Race Ready

Taper.  You’re doing it wrong.

This weekend’s event is a B race for me, meaning I won’t be peaked or fully tapered for it.  My main goal is just to get some race experience in – living in California it feels incredibly strange to be in May and not have done a tri yet.  But I am having a lighter workout week as we approach the race and am enjoying the sparky feeling developing in my legs!

I had a little brick on tap for today – great chance to feel out the new bike fit with some very short race-pace intervals.  And clearly California is trying to prepare me for the sun and heat in Arizona by finally giving us some proper May weather! (sorry photo is fuzzy)

And then it was time for transition practice!!!  I was very excited when I saw a note to practice transitions on my schedule, as it’s something we rarely work on that can really save us time.  Given that I’d recently read this blog post, I had a lot of things I’ve been wanting to try.

First of course I needed to really test out my new helmet and work out any issues of putting it on in a hurry.

Then it was something I’ve never done before – mounting the bike with shoes already clipped in.  I am not brave enough for the flying mount (beautifully demonstrated in that linked post above) at this point and I just about crashed into Jeff’s car the first 2 times I tried getting my feet in the shoes but eventually I got the hang of it.

The best part was discovering I’m not so bad at the flying dismount!  Which I did over and over again until Jeff got a good picture of it.

So with just a few light easy workouts to go (and Coach’s instructions to rest the legs a bit more based on how they felt today), I’m feeling pretty confident I can go out there and execute my plan for Saturday – get some race experience under my belt for the year and try some new things out!

Now who wants to pack all this gear up for me?