I’m one week away from the race and have been tapering for about 2 weeks now. I was elated to have done a mega triple brick 3 weeks ago and felt really ready for this race.
But then, I got this weird pain around my right ankle bone, because of which I stopped running for about a week to give it time to recover and heal. I definitely did not want to run the race with a sore ankle! I got Graston and ART on it, and it got better after about a week, and now I make sure to roller my peroneals a lot to keep them not so tight. Apparently they got stressed and started pulling on my ankle tendons and caused some pain there.
So I biked a little more on days where I would have ran, using my Powercranks to simulate some of the movement of running and taking the heat off my ankle.
Better to arrive fully healthy than to push it with workouts especially during the taper period when it’s really not needed and it’s time for energy conservation!
Always during taper, I get these little tweaks and pains. Basically in the absence of heavy workouts, knots spontaneously form in my muscles and it’s sometimes unnerving and frustrating to have them appear when I’m barely doing anything! Apparently, there is a natural knot/adhesion removing action when you work out and when you stop working out, the absence of this natural action can result in formation of knots and adhesions seemingly out of nowhere.
Having seen this happen time and time again, it bugs me less now but not completely un-bugged. I grab my TPMassage Roller and foam roller and work on them until they are somewhat pliable and so far, they have not affected me on race day.
As I enter into the week prior to race day, I will keep the intensity up but time length down, so as to not lose the neuromuscular feelings of power generation and moving fast. I leave for Brazil on Wednesday which will give me almost two days of rest; getting there takes a freakin’ long time and I’m sure hanging out on planes and in airports will cause the spontaneous formation of MORE knots. For that, I bring with me a lacrosse ball, which is much firmer than the TPMassageBall but just as portable, and I can just drive into my muscles while watching videos on my iPod in the airport lounge.