Coming Into Final Stretch

So, recovery week is over (boo hoo!) and the final stretch is drawing near. In the next 2 weeks I will be putting in my final deposits into my fitness bank for withdrawl on Sept. 13th. It can be said that there's very little - if any at all - fitness to be gained or developed after the next 2 weeks of workouts that I have before taper. I think that's almost true right now - but I will attempt to squeeze a bit more out of this lemon, I think.

Since my fitness peak is here, I decided this weekend to work a bit on my mental fitness, as well. Besides a day full of homework yesterday (yuck!) I added a little 'light reading' to my list after seeing the girls out at the beach on Friday. I showed up for our swim and all lined up on towels were the girls with the following books "Becoming an Ironman" and "Born to Run". Prepping themselves for Madison and Louisville.

So, I went over to Borders on Saturday and picked up "Becoming an Ironman" too, to read some stories of Ironman finishers and their thoughts going into the race. (Again, at this point...I don't need any training books telling me how to train or eat, etc...) I just thought it would be a nice little 'pump you up' book and maybe I'd glean some real-world advice from these racers for how they approached and handled race day.

It's funny too, to think about being at one's 'peak' in a cycle like this...I flash back to when I swam in High School and my coach (Mr. Sholund) told us during one of our taper periods before Sections that this will be the fittest that we will probably ever become. Now I don't know if he meant for that build/taper cycle or not...but I have to disagree after this past year of training. I think I'm a bit 'fitter' than I was when I was 17 years old at the CHS pool. It's silly the things that stick in your head from almost 15 year ago! Yikes!