Taper Time

never before in my marathon training have I yearned for taper as much as I am right now. I am physically, emotionally and psychologically drained, and only part of this is from the training for the race. The travel, a lot of stuff going on at home (job stuff with Hub, the not yet resolved moving questions, Elder Child getting mono AND the flu at the same time, the onset of organized hockey and gymnastics for TDP DinoBoy) and the running are all kind of coming together to make a perfect storm of one tired momma. And as much as I'm looking forward to the race, I am more looking forward to the recovery phase that comes afterward.

Except that recovery from Cowtown will last about, oh, a week, before I kick it back into gear for the Oklahoma City Marathon at the end of April. I've been wanting to do this race for a few years now, but have never been in marathon shape in the spring. Last year got derailed since I was only doing halves, and the year before I had switched into tri training for the first time by spring. So, I'm very excited that I'm going to be race-ready for it this year. And hopeful that this taper will do the trick and re-energize me to have a good race so that I'll be in a good mindset for OKC. I'm sure it will.

But for right now, the focus is on fueling properly, letting the little aches and pains heal, and getting the race strategy in place. We did 10 miles on Saturday morning, in pretty good weather, although it was a little damper and chillier than we'd hoped for. We got a quick tease of the sun before it hid behind the clouds for the rest of the morning, but the wind was light and the temps weren't intolerable. The group ran the first 5 miles at just under 11-minute miles, then negative-split the back end, but I just couldn't keep up with the faster pace on the back end. I was fine as long as I kept with the steady pace of my own, so the group slowly pulled away from me. No matter, I ended up finishing in just at 1:45, so I kept my pace right at 11:00/mile, right where I needed to be.

So that's it around here. The weekday runs are 4, 6, 6 this week, with a whopping 6-miler on Saturday morning. That's the lowest mileage week in a LONG while, and I think I'm looking forward to it.