Taper time

I have no race recap for you this week and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I'm sure Husband would say that's a good thing.

I am still in training, I have a 30k (18.6) mile race coming up on the 10th.  This has made training rather difficult.  Well, not that I have a 30k coming up but that I'm coming off of 3 races.  The 30k will be the longest distance I have ever ran before, not just for a race but period.  The longest distance race I have done is a half marathon, 13.1 miles.  The longest distance I ran was in training and I did 17 super slow miles.   I'm pretty certain I can run 18.6 miles, but not sure how well I can race that distance. I should also mention this is a trail race and not a road race.   This course is a 10k loop, the loop consists of 1 set of stairs, 200 stairs in all and at least one major hill, named cardiac hill.  I'm doing the loop  3 times.  Yes, that means 600 stairs.

Why do I mention this?  Well, since I recently did 3 races three weeks in a row. I've been in taper and recovery mode for a month now.  It makes training for something like this very difficult.   I have to take it easy because my legs need to recover from the races.  Yet I need to train on stairs and hills and with distance to make sure I can do the race coming up.I've also battled two colds in this time frame, which means I've taken more rest days per week than is normal. 

I've never done this before. I've never done hard races back-to-back like this. It makes me mentally unprepared for my race. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm kinda flying by the seat of my pants at this point. I'm doing what I think I need to do to recover from the last several weeks yet keep my body in good condition for whats to come.

It doesn't help that my legs feel like crap on almost every run that I do.  I also haven't done any cross-training because of having to take it easy and taking more rest days but making sure the runs are still happening.  Although, to be honest, today and tomorrow are swimming and biking days this week. 

So that's kinda where I am.  Trying to just survive and figure out how to taper and recover and train for my races all at the same time.