It's Almost Sunday

Yes, taper is indeed a funny thing and as I was wallowing in the fact that I will never make it through 26.2 miles, I was reminded that I felt exactly the same way back in April the week before Boston.  And well, that turned out just fine.   This past week was a tough one though as my legs felt out of sync.  It started with the weather as it was anything but pleasant for the first couple of days. Our little group ended up running a very soggy 5 miles rather than speedwork on Tuesday night since all the local high school tracks seemed occupied with soccer and other sports tournaments.  I think every fall high school sport except football finished this past week (or at least the tournaments to states began), so there was no room on the track for us.  Of course, it would have been a very soggy, wet mess anyway as the rain was pretty torrential.  It was probably good in that I had run sort of hard at Columbus and even with Monday off, another easy day was good for the body (but maybe not so for the sole during taper).  

Due to the crazy night on Tuesday, I postponed the speedwork until Wednesday when I went up to the track during the day.  It was still blustery when I got there, but the sun was starting to creep out from behind the clouds.  The temporary bleachers were still up and occupying lanes 1 and 2, so I had to run slightly warped ovals, but I managed to do the workout (1 x 2K, 1 x 1mile, 1 x 1K), and it felt ok.  I ended up running 5 total miles in roughly 40 min with warm up and cool down on the track, and I reminisced in the fact that 5 miles at 8 min pace used to be a training run.  So much for aging - at least I can still run miles under 7 min on the track again (although these were at 7:40, 7:10, and 6:55 min pace).

Thursday night turned out to be a beautiful one (even if we couldn't see the partial solar eclipse - you're not supposed to look at them anyway, right?), and the few of us left in our little group (Cathy, Liz and I) ran our final tempo run (7 miles total with 5 @ 8 min pace).  Not quite as fast as last week's run, but still a great effort nonetheless.  I felt a bit tired probably from Wednesday's speedwork and the fact that I had just come from a workout with Jake.  It is probably due to taper as well.

Friday brought another rest day, and Saturday brought our last longish run.  We (Cathy, Liz, Kevin, Denine and myself) ended up running 12 miles in what felt like an extremely sluggish 9:18 pace.  We had fun on the run and actually ran our fastest mile in mile 12 as we did an "Indian run" to the finish.  This did help to open up the legs and the stride just a bit.  Now I know we were supposed to go easy and slow-ish, but it felt tough from step one.  I'm certainly hoping that this is just taper at its best, and I have to remind myself to once again "trust the training" as I really did all the prescribed miles and my speedwork is back up on par with where it was the last time I ran the NYC marathon in 2011.  I guess the good of the week was that Sunday's 6 miles felt real easy.  It certainly wasn't fast, but the last couple of miles were faster than those on Saturday and they felt pretty effortless.  So I good sign, I hope.  

So in less than a week, it will be time for me to get that "Invincible On" and run NYC once again.  I would be lying if I didn't say I'd love to go under 3:50 and even close to the 3:46 I ran back in 2011.  However, I'd be super happy with 3:55 as long as I can get myself back to Boston in 2016 for Shannon's last year at BU.  Looking forward to a couple of great days in the city with Chris and Mary Pat.  And just looking forward to being in New York City.  NYC Marathon, here I come.