I have been participating in triathlon long enough now, to know that strange things happen while tapering into a big race.  It is not unusual for me to have a run where I experience dead legs.  It is also quite common for me to experience ‘phantom injuries’, like the one I wrote about here.

Today I had my run with dead legs.  It was a fifty minute run, that included 20 minutes at tempo pace in the middle of the run.  I wasn’t super enthusiastic about the run all morning, so I chose to go to North Park to do it.  My hope was that the nice scenery would boost my spirits. The thought of running around my neighborhood, was far from appealing today.

While the park was great (I even got to see one of the resident Bald Eagles), the weather was awful.  It was quite cold and it rained the whole time.  At one point, the rain was really heavy and I got very wet. This definitely didn’t help.

Right from the start, my legs didn’t feel right.  That happens a lot and usually, after a mile or two, the feeling goes away. Today it never went away, even during, or after, the tempo interval.  My pace wasn’t too bad, but it was a miserable run.

In times past, I would have started to fret about my race.  What if my legs are like this on race day?  Will my race be ruined?  I now know from experience, that this feeling of dead legs, is just part of the process.  My body is absorbing the gains from my last training block, and in doing so, it sometimes doesn’t feel good.

My race is ten days away.  There is nothing to worry about with how I felt on the run I did today.