Taper time

When I was swimming in high school, I couldn't wait for taper time!  Less workouts and less distance, it was awesome!  But this taper is different, I don't have a coach telling me what to do and I have no idea how you taper for an Ironman!  My idea is to keep my weekday training about the same, while decreasing the miles of my long run and ride.  I hope that works!
Saturday - I headed out for a 40 mile bike along familiar roads.  I felt pretty good and the weather was awesome.  I cruised along the horse farms in Clarke County, trying to imagine how I'll feel passing the horse farms in Louisville!  At about 17 miles into the ride, I was just over 18 mph and feeling great.  Then I was up and down several hills which decreased my average speed, but feeling good getting up the hills increased my confidence.  I looped around a bit and then headed home, but ended up being just short of 40 miles.  I felt great and was happy that it was only 11 am - I still had so much of the day left!  A nice change from the previous weekends with long rides.  Jason headed out soon after I got home, then we took the kids to the pool for a little family swim time in the afternoon.  We all had a great time and Makayla is doing awesome with her swimming!
Sunday - I debated a lot about how far to run, finally decided to head out for 10 miles.  At about two miles I was feeling really blah and ate a Gu hoping it would give me some energy.  It seemed to help but at 4 miles, I decided to turn around and make it an 8 mile run.  I felt pretty good on my way home and laughed as I crossed the bridge that is still under construction.  It's due to be done in the next week, but I won't be needing to run across it for a while!  Oh well, it will be nice to have it done as I train for the Chicago Marathon.
We stayed up late watching the Closing Ceremonies last night and it was really tempting to sleep in this morning and blame it on the Olympics...  but I didn't!   The weather had been pretty nice over the weekend getting cool enough to open the windows which was nice, but it was only 59 degrees when I got to the pool this morning!  Thankfully the water wasn't too bad but it was chilly when we stopped and chit chatted (you would think that would keep us moving, but we still did a lot of chit chatting...)  Had a great 2700m workout, feeling great in the pool! 
I've been doing the Monday night group ride but I am going to skip that tonight and do a little work on my bike.  I need a little more practice changing tubes, getting my aero bottle all set, and switching the back wheel to the race wheel.  And it's our 7 year anniversary so it will be nice to eat dinner together!