This is the true post of Little 500 riders picked to have their lives surrounding America's Greatest College Weekend posted to the web. To find out what happens when the IDS stops just reporting and starts getting real...check here for The Real Ride -- Little 500 style.
Saturday morning while I was lying in bed waiting for my alarm to ring, I did a bit of reflecting on the past six months. It's crazy to believe that I am so near to the end of such a long journey. As I was sprawled out on my bed, my body was in such a relaxed state, I could feel the strength of all of my muscles, which only made my mind buzz with the thoughts of how great I am going to feel the next two Saturdays after a solid taper. I was reminded of my days of high school swimming. My first head coach, Ralph Mundt, who was a fiery and stern commander of his swimmers, would always rant throughout the season about "the magic taper fairy." While his rants were always very loud and longwinded (sometimes even involving a Gatorade cooler being chucked the length of the pool deck), the focus of the message was always dead on: in order for a taper to be successful, you have to train hard everyday throughout the entire season for it to work. In other words, there is no such thing as a "magic taper fairy" that will come at the beginning of the taper and tap her wand on your head to make you fast by the end of it.
I have been a self-coached athlete for more than five years, and over that span I have learned a great deal about my body and how it responds to various training loads. However, this current training season marks two firsts for me in my athletic career. This season is the first time that I have had the luxury of using a power meter on my bike. To put it simply, my power meter has allowed me to not only track my training progress throughout the year, but more importantly, it has given me hard data of how intense my efforts are while I am riding. This has been such an important tool in eliminating the guess work involved with knowing how hard to work while on the bike. Secondly, this has been the first training plan that I have written since becoming certified as a USA Triathlon level 1 coach this past summer. As I mentioned before, I have definitely learned a lot about myself and my body over the last five years. Prior to going through my certification clinic, I always believed that I had a pretty good grasp of how to write out a successful training plan, but that knowledge paled in comparison to how much I learned after attending my four-day clinic last July. This training plan has been the first one that I have written with my knew knowledge as a certified coach, and I can easily say that I definitively know it has been my best season of training to date.
These two points, in addition to the hard work that I have put in over the last sixth months has not only thoroughly prepared me physically but mentally as well. A friend of mine asked me the other day how I could show such a calm exterior with two of the biggest races of my career so near. I responded simply by telling her it was because I believed in myself and in my training. I told her that this Saturday in Texas was not a matter of luck, but rather about going out and throwing down the fastest splits possible in each discipline and truly testing the limits of my body. As for L5, I am now to the point where I just want to be in the moment of it all. As with collegiate tri nats, I am truly prepared to take the track and push my body to places that it has never been before. They say it takes three L5's to fully understand and know all of the intricacies, strategies, and makeup of this truly amazing event, and well, next Saturday will be my third time mounting my Schwinn bicycle.
I fly out of Indianapolis tomorrow morning for Texas. Triathlon nationals will take place in Lubbock, Texas on Saturday morning. 10 days.
Jordan Bailey is a junior majoring in History. He rides for the Black Key Bulls.
