Oceanside Triathlon Pre-Race

Ah… the wonder of the pre-race taper. There is no greater joy than building up to high volume workouts of 20+ hour weeks only to taper off leading up to a race. To look at your workout schedule and see a single easy workout followed by a day of rest is a thing of beauty. Many people ignore the taper and go hard through to the day of the race. Others feel uncomfortable significantly backing off their workouts for fear that they won’t be race ready.

Oh, but not I. I fully embrace the taper. It may be the subdued lazy ass in me, but after weeks of heavy volume, I am fully willing to take a few rest days. I am running on faith that allowing the body and mind to rest will give me fresher legs for the race. I firmly believe that rest is just as important as work when it comes to proper training. It is truly about finding that balance.

With the Oceanside Triathlon coming up this weekend, I am in the middle of my first taper since I began training. This one is somewhat of a “mini” taper, as it only lasts a week (I will do a full 3 week taper leading up to my half iron distance in December). Once again, I am keeping my expectations low for this race, as it is my first olympic distance triathlon (1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run). I have no doubt I can do the distance, but it’s about how I pace it, and that’s what I want to practice. For me this will be a trial run toward the longer distances in how I manage my pacing, my nutrition, and my patience. I plan to employ my plan from Long beach, which is to go out hard on the swim, conservative on the bike, and then as hard as I can on the run. If I can still be fresh after the swim and bike to run a good 10K I will know my fitness is good enough to handle a half Ironman.

This should be a fun race, and I’m glad I found out about it. Being that it is an inaugural event, there may be some organization issues, but it’s being put on by Lifetime Sports, which is hosting this as the championship event for their triple crown. Since it’s the first year they are hosting it, it’s hard to know what to expect. Will it be challenging? How many competitors will there be? How is the support? I will have to be open minded about this one.

If you’d like to come down and check it out, we will be starting out at Oceanside Harbor at around 7 am, and we’ll be finishing at the Oceanside Pier by around 9-10 am.