Training Taper

With the our grand hike just barely over a week away, we have been cutting back on our mileage and I on my weekly training. We both still do our weight training, Harley's cardio, and my weekly water aerobics session at Gold's Gym in Redmond. But for the most part the high mileage has been drastically reduced in order to conserve our energy for the big day.

I took the last 2 Mondays off completely as rest days and it was really hard for me. I felt really lazy and like I had become a sedentary couch potato. Although I did have many other things to get done and still need to finish, guilt set in that I had taken a day off from training my body. Further, my dogs were not any help when they layed around on the deck all day and gave me sad eyes.......heart renching and I felt like a bad mom for taking time to do other things I needed to do.

Last week I took 2 rest days off from walking. On one of the days I went to water aerobics and did a long workout on my legs at the gym. On the other days I stuck to about an hour brisk walk and one day I ran.

For this week I went back to Daniel's Ranch to do my hill training and this time I ran it for 45 minutes! It was rainy and getting dark but for a run and a running up a hill it felt much more refreshing than the sweltering heat we had 2 weeks prior. I actually prefer running when it is cooler and then rain feels great! I do not perform well and have a difficult time breathing and tire sooner when it is hot.

Sunday we had a very short training session of 6 miles. I am going according to the training schedule when I did the Seattle marathon. According to the plan we were to training for 1 hour 40 minutes but since we are doing a greater distance, I bumped up our training for longer so we could cover a greater mileage.

This weekend will be an hour and 20 minutes but I will shoot for 4.5 miles which should be about an hour and a half. It is really hard to cut back on mileage after doing such l0ng distances. We are supposed to have 3 complete rest days next week and I will have a difficult time doing that as well.

Because we were doing such a short training session, Harley thought we could carry less things and was opting for just a water bottle instead of his hydropack. Part of training is preparing to carry and use everything you plan to have with you on event day. Thus you gradually end up bringing more as you hike less. If you are a runner for a marathon it is different as they get through the course faster, will get hotter, and need to carry as little as possible (they use a hydration belt and then for marathons there are lots of water stations with gatorade and sport gels. We have no aide so we need to carry everything we need with us just as if you were going to take a long day hike in the back country.)

So after going on about my whole mantra about preparation I made a very stupid mistake. A mile and a half into the trail and I went to take a sip of water but could not find my hydration hose! I was a little confused and thought I must have cramped it into the pack without setting up the hose. My pack was heavy because I had the bottles of water for the dogs so I did not think I was missing anything when I left the house because my pack was heavy.

I FORGOT MY FREAKING WATER!!!!!! I has put the bladder in the refridgerator to keep it cold and then forgot to grab it before I went out the door. Wow! That is not an error I want to make on hike day!

(Why I did not drink the dog water bottles......I had become accustomed to pouring the water the dogs did not drink back into the bottles and did not wash them. Therefore, they were designated dog water bottles and I was not too keen on swaping dog spit with them.)

What did I do? I had to drink off of Harley's hydration pack which is not enough to last us through the whole trek next Sunday. With my facial paralysis, I have a difficult time drinking the water off his too. So it was a good thing it was a short trek.

water I carry: 64 ounces for the dogs and 48 ounces for myself for the first half of the trek. At 15 miles I run out so I will need to switch out the 64 oz. bottles when we drop off the dogs at the 10 mile mark.