Monday, April 21, 2008

Two weeks and counting

The first week of taper went pretty well. I certainly can't complain about a 10K PR (see story in my last post). I can complain about the almost incessant thoughts of Colorado that go flashing through my head, but there's really not much that I can do about that (outside of some sort of illegal drugs). Here's how the week went:

Monday - 6 miles recovery in the morning and another 4 in the afternoon. This has been my bread and butter Monday workout for many weeks now and this was the last one.

Tuesday - 10 miles at general aerobic pace with 8x100m strides. The GA pace was a little harder than it should have been because I did this run at 4:30 AM, but it went alright considering.

Wednesday - 14 miles easy. My last mid-week medium-long run before Colorado. I'm not shedding any tears over that. It's not that these runs are hard, it's just hard to get motivated for a 14 mile run at 4:30 in the morning.

Thursday - 7 miles recovery with 6x100m strides.

Friday - 6 miles recovery. I feel like a slacker now, with two straight single digit days. But, my legs feel like they've had a week of rest.

Saturday - 10.2 miles total, including 2 miles of warmup, 2 miles of cooldown and a PR and 3rd place finish at the Kevin Whirlwind Horse 10K wedged in between. This was exactly what a tune up race should be; confirmation that you are in better shape than you were when you started this crazy endeavor.

Sunday - 17 miles. From the very first step, I knew that my legs were NOT into this. After the first mile, I was wondering how I was possibly going to convince them that another 16 was a good idea. But, even though my legs were really tight and sore, my easy pace came to me, well, pretty easily. Eventually, the legs loosened up and I was actually able to get in a pretty decent long run, the last one of this training cycle.

Total - 74.2 miles

So, only two weeks left until the big day and I only have one run of ten miles or more left before the race (a 13 miler this coming Sunday). Of course, I've already started checking the long, long range forecast on accuweather.com. Why I do this is beyond me because it's about as accurate as a chimp throwing a dart, but I guess it gives me something else to obssess about. Anyhow, yesterday the forecast was saying 58 degrees and rainy on race day and today it's saying 79 and sunny. My point exactly. None of this even really matters because the race starts at 6:15 AM at about 6000 feet elevation, so either way it's going to be fairly cold when I start running and I'll (hopefully) be done running before it has a chance to get too warm. As long as there isn't a foot of fresh snow or a gale force wind blowing in my face, the weather really shouldn't be a huge factor (knock on wood, cross my fingers and toes, wish upon a falling star). Ah, the joys of taper madness.

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