Monday, November 1, 2010

Taper Run #1 -

Wahooo Taper is here! For your new (and non) runners reading this - (Sidebar Seems from my last post I have more than one reader here - Hi Jon and Jess - sorry I missed you in my last count...sidebar over) - taper is the period where you start cutting back in distance and intensity of training runs so you can start getting the body recovered from the day to day grind of the past weeks of training. Since I was injured and took some time off and already had to cut back some runs - this week will be a quasi taper before the real taper starts next week. Taper is also the period where one starts to go a little crazy - things like following start to happen (feel free to leave comments on what happens to you during taper).
- You start to think "Did I do enough training to really run 26.2 miles?"
- Mood shifts from - glass half full - to holy crap I lost the damn glass.
- You put on weight - and start to worry about it.
- My legs get really twitchy on rest days
- Stress dreams start to happen about race day (I'll get into these sometime later during taper)
- Every little ache or twinge in your legs freaks you out.

Now for today's run -
Went out for a 7 miler with hopes of adding some speed work in. After a mile warmup I started to do 1/3 mile on's and off's with the "on" segments being at 5k pace/effort. Normally I would go by pace - but it was super windy today which made holding the pace difficult. Ended the run with what should have been a Marathon pace (8:24) mile - which was an 8:08 mile.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/55158494

On more specific Marathon news - the marathon beard is growing in nicely (unless you ask my wife). I have to talk with my facial hair coach to see what our plans should be for race day. I also ordered my race day shoes (Saucony Kinvaras) from the running store in my area - they should be here next week, which means as soon as they come in all my runs will be done in those shoes to get them gently broken in before race day.

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