Greetings from the first week of taper mania! I have to say that despite the mileage going down, this week didn’t feel particularly easy. I think that has something to do with the fact that it was a really busy week outside of running. I always make a concerted effort to see friends once classes wrap up for the semester, but I’m very guilty of making plans every night and burning myself out. I’m also feeling a few of the mental demons sneaking their way in, so I want to really cement my mantras and mental strategies during these final two weeks before race day. Here are my goals for the taper:
- Run my marathon pace runs at MGP, not faster.
- Carb load in a smart, gradual way and take it easy with the sugar and vino.
- Really give myself a mental break and take time to chill the eff out.
On the logistical front, I started rotating in a lighter pair of sneakers that I plan to use on race day–and they feel great! I usually run in Asics GT 2000 4 and my newer shoes are the Mizuno Wave Rider 20. I have done speedwork and racing in the Wave Rider 18 and these are a great new version. I have super narrow feet, especially in the midfoot/heel, so my sneaker options are limited to those that come in a 2A width. If there are any other tiny footed people out there looking for shoe options, these two work well in rotation for me. I plan to get about 50 miles in on the Wave Riders before race day. I did spend a silly amount of timing deciding whether or not to return a pair of Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 33s–does anyone have thoughts on these?? I’m all ears!
Also, Denise and I are planning to run Sugarloaf together! We run really similar paces and are totally in sync with our race strategies, so I think it will be great to aim to stick together–of course with the caveat that we’ll both need to run our own races and do what we need to do to take care of ourselves day-of. We ran a really strong long run together on Sunday so I’m very confident about our plan. I am starting to think throgh nutrition planning and race strategy also–more to come on those 🙂
Week 14: 45.3 miles total
- Monday: 6 easy + strides
- Tuesday: 4 “watchless” easy miles, banded strength circuit
- Wednesday: 8 MGP miles, fast finish
- Thursday: 6 easy
- Friday: 4 easy
- Saturday: Rest day
- Sunday: 10 easy, 6 MGP for 16 total at 8:20 average
Linking up with The Weekly Wrap (hosted by Hoho Runs and Miss Sippipiddlin), with Eat Pray Run DC for her training linkup, and with the Jess’s (Jess Runs ATL and The Right Fits).
Ladies and gents, THE LAST LONG RUN IS DONE. Which mean–IT’S TAPER TIME!!! Ok, sorry for shouting, but I am SO excited to be heading into the last stage of training with just 19 days to go until the race. I’m definitely feeling a zillion times more prepared than I did last year at this point, so it’s extra gratifying to be dialing things down a little bit.
I think it was a combination of physical and mental exhaustion, but either way, I ended up leaving work early and taking a nap before reviving myself for class.
Oops! Now all is well and I can’t wait to play around with all of the features, the most important of which is that I don’t have to wait around for my old school Garmin Forerunner 10 to spend 5 minutes searching for satellites every morning. Huzzah.
Shorter and Faster 