As any marathon runner can tell you, tapering (the last couple weeks of a training plan where mileage and intensity decrease), can make you a little stir crazy.  For months and months any extra energy you might have gets immediately exhausted during the next training run.  So when the running decreases, the excess time and energy increases, which can be a dangerous thing.  You start to notice a little ache here or pain there that you’re pretty sure wasn’t there yesterday.

For me, I’m trying to redirect that unhelpful unrest into this blog.  Now that my peak mileage is behind me, I’m feeling pretty solid.  I followed the training plan nearly perfectly and hit my target times for the most part, all while remaining injury-free*.  During the early weeks of the running schedule I felt strong and saw lots of improvement.  However, especially recently, I’ve had a few discouraging outings that left me feeling dejected.  It’s hard to separate out what was caused by fatigue versus weather versus not being in good enough shape.

Thankfully my last long run before tapering was a successful 20 miler, made better in my opinion to the gracious cloud coverage.  My hope is that training in Austin heat and racing in cooler Vermont weather will give me an extra boost (like it did in Chicago).  We’ll see how the next 19 days go until the race as my legs recover from months of pounding and magically transform to be able to carry me across the finish line in under 3:05.

*That bang you just heard was me knocking on wood as hard as possible**.

**I now may or may not have a broken hand.  So much for injury-free***.

***Kidding*.