Tapering — the time in training that most runners hate.  The end of most training plans feature several weeks of decreased mileage and intensity to give the body time to recover in preparation for the race.  It also leads to pants full of ants and an overall surplus in energy.  Really it’s a silly idea, to build a runner’s endurance up to 50+ miles per week, transforming their body into a high-performance running machine and then suddenly say “now take it easy for a few weeks”.  Well to that I say “psssssssh”.

Week 14 had its fair share of easy runs and recovery miles.  I was still getting back on track from the 20 miler in Connecticut and traveling.  There really wasn’t too much to report during the week on the running front.  The big news in this Mike’s life is that Ev and I officially, successfully, actually bought a house!  With that comes TONS of work, like dealing with movers, an electrician, DirecTV, unpacking, buying furniture, painting rooms, and the list goes on forever.  It’s incredibly exciting though!

To make things more hectic, on Thursday I signed up for the IBM Uptown Classic 10k being held on Sunday.  I needed to squeeze in a 14 mile run over the weekend so I decided to do the 10k and then run home (almost exactly 8 miles from race to house).  You can read more about all that here in my race report.  It was a successful week other than I didn’t really take it easy.  In no way should a taper week’s average pace be right around marathon race pace.  But whatever.  In the words of someone awesome: I do what I want.