In the Long Run: Taper Madness.

Gather round for another tale of the tribulations of Me and Triple T, as we both train for our upcoming races.

This week was the start of my taper before my Half Marathon on March 18th.

It's kind of driving me crazy.

I know the taper is designed to allow my body to recover from the rigors of training, but someone needs to tell my legs/brain that.

I'm still running the same amount of days, but shorter distances and at about 70% effort  - but it's the shorter distances that are bothering me.

(Is it a sign of dementia that I was disappointed that this week's run was only 8 miles instead of last week's 12?)

It just feels wrong to not be pushing to go farther - and if you combine that with the nervous energy of knowing my race is less than a week away, and you can imagine how much fun I am to be around.

I went into this week's run thinking that I would break from training a little bit and do the distance, but at a slightly faster pace than the Long Slow Run usually calls for. That way my disappointment about the lack of distance could be offset by trying to get my pace up.

Sounds cool, right?

Well it was, right until my brain started to do the worst possible thing: I started to think.

"What are you doing?" I asked myself. "Why are you going to potentially fuck up weeks of training because you feel you can push it a bit more?"

"But 8 miles just doesn't feel like progress - and training is all about progression, right?"

"You're going to progress yourself into a fucking injury if you don't slow down, you retard."

"It'll be fine - don't be such a pussy. Besides, maybe we can make sure we get closer to a good finishing time.."

"Are you completely fucking idiotic? I didn't think we were shooting for a time - I thought this was all about doing it right, following the plan, and just running it for the sake of the race?"

"It is..but wouldn't it be cool?"

"Shut the fuck up and run, asshole - and slow down - If I so much as feel that foot or hip tighten up, I'm giving you nightmares for a week."

"Whatever."

 "I'm not kidding - do you want to dream about running it naked? Surrounded by grandmothers? In bikinis?"

"Okay, okay - you win."

Now imagine that conversation repeated about 12 times during the course of my 8 miles and you can  probably see why my pace was so up and down it looked like I was doing fartlek.*

When I got home after the run, I looked at what next week's runs had in store for me - and disappointment set in again. To give you a hint, if you add up the distance of three of my Taper Week runs, it barely equals a Long Run from a week ago.

Shit.

It's called Taper Madness for a reason - because no sane person would bitch about having to run less.





Later.

*I love using the word Fartlek - just for the fact that whenever a non-runner sees it, they wonder what the hell we're talking about. It kind of just rolls off the tounge. I sometimes just want to run around an Ikea whispering "Fartlek" to everyone I pass.


Triple T is weeks away from even being close to a taper - but I'm pretty sure she's in a cut back week. She how she handles it here.