Taper Up? Taper Down?....no, Sleep!!

Anyone who has done any significant amount of intense physical training for a particular goal - a marathon, triathlon, high altitude trekking, professional athletes, at some point close the end goal have to decide whether they taper up (increase) their training or taper down their training and there's also the question of diet - do you load up on the carbs or not?

so with 5 days left before I head off what am I doing?

same old, same old really...

In the last 15 weeks I've ever so gradually increased my workload - 2, then 3 then 4 times up and down the office block every day, starting the jacket weight at 6kg and increasing to 10kg, then also doing a training session every day before work 

Am I going to load up on carbs? 

To be quite honest, having been on a high protein,  extremely low carb diet for nearly a year now, I haven't suffered from any loss of energy despite all the training, my recovery ability is so much better than it used to be, I'm lean, fit and looking good.

I get all the carbs I need from dairy, nuts, seeds and veggies, and besides when I do eat bread or rice I feel fat, sluggish and slow - and I do suffer energy fluctuations due to blood sugar swings  - so why would I want to add carbs back into my diet now?

Don't want to go back to that!

so what am I going to do differently? 

SLEEP!

eh?

thats not in the training manuals!

It probably is really, after weeks and weeks of existing on adrenaline, about 4.5 - 5 hours of broken sleep, and stress, my main goal this week is to get some sleep!

Sleep is when the body gets to assimilate changes you've made, and settle into its new 'shape', so by not sleeping I haven't been growing into myself properly or recovering fully and healing minor aches and pains, on some days I've been so exhausted, that its just been sheer stubborn bloody mindedness that has kept me going 

You have no idea how good it felt this morning to finally have shut down the noisy chattering monkey brain I've been living with and relax completely into a deeply 'out of it' meditation - it took me 5 minutes to resurface when the screecher went off!

And then I was so comfortable in bed, I just went back into another deep meditation until daylight 'woke' me up - felt wonderful after that! :-)

If I happen to miss a few training sessions this week, because I'm asleep I'm not going to get upset - I'm totally going to enjoy the rest - I think I've earned it!

Sweet Dreams!