Taper time!!.....again??

Well, I guess since the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon is a mere three weeks away, I'm in taper mode now, although this week will actually be my highest mileage week between Colorado and DMTM. In any case, this last week went pretty well:

Monday - Rest

Tuesday - 6.1 miles recovery

Wednesday - 6.3 miles recovery in the morning and basketball at lunch time. First time I've played lunchtime basketball since January. I was definitely feeling it afterwards. Just plain running is far different from running/stopping/jumping/running/jumping/stopping/running.

Thursday - 5 miles recovery

Friday - 7.2 miles recovery

Saturday - 5.1 miles total including 2 miles of warmup and the DAM 5K in Sturgis (see report below).

Sunday - 12 miles easy. This was my first double digit run since Colorado. It went well considering it was pretty warm out and I decided to venture up a new road (as in they just built the thing to provide access to a new subdivision) that had a 15.5% percent grade on the uphill. Thanks in large part to that hill, I ended up climbing a total of over 1000 feet during the run.

Total - 41.7 miles

So, three weeks to go until DMTM. I'm kind of relieved that I don't have any lofty goals in mind for this race because I can tell that the speed just isn't there right now. For now, I plan on running around a 3:30 with my friend Juan, who is coming out from Eugene for the race. I realized last week that 3:30ish is kind of my default marathon time. Out of eight marathons, I have run four of them within two minutes of 3:30 (3:29 at Brookings, 3:30 at Montana, 3:32 at Missoula, and 3:28 at Monumental Challenge). So, I guess I should actually shoot for a 3:31 to complete the full sequence from 3:28-3:32. This will also be my first race as a 30 year old, so I guess that makes a 3:30 time all the more appropriate.