T minus 2 days until race day! As always, I have a good combo of excitement and butterflies to keep me energized. Also, as always I am doing a modified taper because I am never quite where I should be in my training. It doesn’t matter if it is my A race or C race, somehow I am always playing catch up. Oh well…so long as I am having fun!

On Sunday the 3 of us drove the 45 minutes from Newport to Redondo Beach to join up with the California Triathlon Team to do a refreshingly new coastal ride with their team. It was so great to get out of our area and ride somewhere different. There were sweeping ocean views, tough hills, a photo shoot on a cliff (with some poor random guy acting as our personal photographer), and we finished it off with some shopping at Tri-Lab. Any day that ends with shopping is a good day in my book.

Later on in the day, my man and I ended up down on Balboa Island having a few Moscow Mules and watching the Oscars. On Tuesday I treated my co-workers to the STINKIEST lunch on the planet. Haha. I really did feel bad…I was running late for work and this was all I had time to grab. I did at least light a candle after I was done eating 🙂 

To do my “modified taper” this week, I brought my 6-7 mile morning runs down to 3-4 miles but still tried to throw in a few comfortably hard 1/2 mile sections where I would pick up the pace to around 7:10. Is it just me, or does everyone have the worst run of their lives right before a race? I felt like I had lead blocks tied to my feet this morning.

I also did 2 short (45 min) sessions on the trainer at a comfortable pace, with a few harder sections where I would get my HR up to around 160 thrown in.

Swimming did not happen this week unfortunately 😦

But, I did go bananas and eat a whole box of these amazing morsels from Trader Joe’s. They are sooooo good!!

Stay tuned for our race reports next week, and LOTS of pictures! The 3 of us are going to be together for 48 hours straight…there will be LOTS of pictures!!!