Tapering, but not enjoying myself

Normally I enjoy taper week.  I find myself with a lot more free time to sit around and read, watch TV, work on my honey-do’s and sit in the backyard enjoying the peace and quiet.  This week has started off a bit differently.

I did have a great weekend last weekend.  My workouts were a bit shorter, and I was surprised how fresh I felt after I was done.  I felt so good in fact, that I wondered if I’d pushed hard enough.  I knew I had, because during the workouts I made sure I was putting for the the effort I deemed appropriate for the weekend before a race.

So with several solid build weeks and the beginning of a taper week underway, what could possibly be the problem?  I made a tactical decision last week to get a couple of crowns put in.  While I am still a bit under the weather from my stomach ills, I figured two weeks would be enough time for me to be back to form.

Maybe under normal circumstances that would have been true, but of course nothing works out normally!  On Thursday I was still having pain in the area, and by Friday afternoon I knew something was wrong.  Unfortunately the office was already closed for the weekend.  I managed getting through the weekend with regular doses of Tylenol (including a 2 am dose), only to find out Monday morning that they couldn’t see me until Tuesday.

I had a brief conversation with the dentist yesterday, who promised to call me back regarding possible antibiotics and pain pills.  He also mentioned the dreaded words:  root canal.  Needless to say the thought of a root canal just days before a key race are not very exciting to me, nor is the thought of doing the race with my current situation.  I think that given a choice between the two I’ll wait on the extra work if I can get something that will allow me to be pain free for more than 4 hours, but not make me a blithering idiot.

A third choice is to cancel my race.  I really don’t want to do that because races are expensive, and this was a key race for me this year.

I’ll let you know how it all comes out, maybe after my current dose of Valium wears off!