Sunday, September 22, 2019

The Taper

My marathon is in two weeks, and I did pretty much all the workouts in my training plan. Well, to be honest, I did have to skip one or two of the hard ones because I'm pretty sure the plan was written for a younger person with enhanced ability to recover. I'm older--a masters runner--and I can only do a maximum of one-and-a-half speed workouts per week.

But, with the exception of that one week where I took an extra day off because I'd tweaked my Achilles tendon (on that run with the turkeys I wrote about), I ran all the miles. Yay!

Last week, I really celebrated my efforts by completing both of the prescribed speed workouts and my final 20-miler. I did that last long run all alone without my headset (I drove to a route and forgot it, which annoyed me till no end). In the final portion of the effort, I kept telling myself, "This is the last mile of your last marathon training run." It was a motivational little mantra.

It was the next day that I realized the problem with my end-of-run, last-mile pep-talk. While it's true that I was in the last mile of that particular marathon training run, I still actually have to go out the door and log the taper miles. I have skipped the taper in many a marathon cycle because I've been too busy teaching, but this time I'm seeing it through. Therefore, I still had a hill workout this week. I did four up-tempo miles yesterday in the early-morning dark. I did them even though I've basically been feeling like my legs are dragging for an entire seven days.

My friend Jordan says that my blah feeling is exactly appropriate. I should be excited to be feeling awful because it means I did the training just right. In two weeks at marathon time, I'll be totally ready. We'll see! I hope so, and I'm looking forward to lightening my load even further after today. Today's my last run over 10 miles. I've got 12, and I'm going with friends. It'll be way better than 20 with no friends and no headset.

1 comment:

LH said...

KUDOS.

I'm filled with admiration, and you haven't even done the marathon yet.

Please keep us posted on all things marathon related.