Tapir Madness - Day 4

I adopted a pet today. His name is Marathon:

He will be my constant companion for the next three weeks. Some of his endearing qualities:

• Tapirs near a water source will swim, sink to the bottom to allow small fish to pick parasites off their bulky bodies.
• Along with fresh water lounging, tapirs often wallow in mud pits.
• The thick skin on the backs of their necks helps to protect them from threats.
• When threatened, the creatures are able to run fairly quickly, considering their size and cumbersome appearance, and find shelter in the thick undergrowth of the forest or in water.

I think Marathon and I will get along quite well....

Taper Madness - Day 3

Let's see. Where do I start. First off, something that Adam (I Am Boring) left in a blog comment yesterday about taper time makes a lot of sense:

"...most people will say to keep the same intensity (speed) as before just reduce the volume. I like that a lot - keep you legs moving at the same speeds that they are used to."

That makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. I mean it takes doing something for 20 days to make it habit, right? Can you forget a habit by *not* doing it for 20 days? 21 day taper? Hmm.

So, I kept my date with the hills yesterday and did my final hill repeats before the Big Day. Two mile warm up, 6 hill repeats (1/4 mile, 110 foot gain, followed by a walk/slow jog back down) and a 1 mile warm down. Oh yeah. Remember that stuff I wrote about yesterday? About watching my pace? I'm thinking 10:15 - 10:30 pace for race day. Pace on my first two miles? 9:30. FAIL!!!! Well - that's what these couple of weeks are about.

Today's taper gem - diet. The first week of taper means protein should be making an appearance in our diets. Time to fuel to repair damage from what should have been a hard final week leading to taper. Let's see - Monday dinner - pasta with meat sauce. Check. Tuesday - roast chicken and broccoli. Check. Wednesday - barbecued tri tip. Check. Thursday - soy chorizo with eggs and refried beans. Check. So far so good! (Of course, I fail to mention the ice cream that has been inhaled as well.....)

I have a rest day on the schedule today. I seem to have quite a few of those recently. Well, maybe not. I think the butterflies are starting to appear. This is common for even seasoned marathoners. The best advice for dealing with the butterflies came yesterday from Jill (Run With Me):

"What helps me is to make a list of all my anxiety and list who has control of it and how I can control what I can."

I've got my pen and clipboard out. Thanks everyone for putting up with me for the next three weeks!

Taper Madness - Day 2

I got out for my planned six miler late in the afternoon yesterday. I was pretty sneaky. The wind was blowing onshore (happens a lot in the afternoon as the rising air over the land draws the cooler air off the ocean). In my earlier days I would have put the miles in. Screw the wind. But demonstrating my higher intelligence (well, okay, the fact that it took me about a year and a half to catch on), I headed up the road so that I would be running the first three miles into the wind, which of course meant that the way back to the car would be with a tailwind. I'm not sure it helped that much, except to make it feel like the second half of the run was easier. Ah - the power of the mind. Final stats - 6 mile at an average pace of 9:29, 78% of MHR.

Speaking about the power of the mind - it's time to exercise mine a little during taper madness. This will be my third time doing 26.2. The first time was pure hell. The only thing that I was sure about was that I needed to do another to get the monkey off my back. The second time was better, but there was still a lot of experimenting going on right up to the start line (and maybe even beyond). I know I could have benefited from more planning. Anticipating what could go wrong before the race will leave you more prepared to deal with catastrophes during the race. Anyone who has been there knows what I mean. So, what I thought I would do here for the next couple of weeks is, with the help of yesterday's article and my own experience, show you how I am dealing with taper madness.

As we wind down the miles in week 1 of taper, there are a number of things we can do to get mentally ready:

1. Weather - It's time to start watching the weather. March weather can be such a crap shoot here in L.A. Average temperature is 70. Record for March 21 is 93. Rainy season won't quite be over. Um yeah. The start time is late (7:30 AM), and by the time my wave hits the start line, it's likely to be 7:45 or 8:00 AM. This means that I will be finishing around 12:30 to 1:00 in the afternoon. The last thing I want to do is be overdressed at the start and suffer later on as the sun comes out and the course heats up.
2. Goal pace: I'm going to start practicing running at goal pace if I'm not doing a tempo run. I need to run by feel. Right now I don't know that feel. Starting Sunday, if I'm too fast, I *will* slow down. No reason to be setting practice records at this point. It's always too easy to get caught up in the excitement of the moment and to go out way too fast. Believe me (experience speaking here) - it will come and grab you in the butt later on.
3. Clothing and gear: The carnal sin on race day is to be doing the race in something new. This weekend's long run will be done in the same shorts, shirt and socks that I used for Long Beach - not because I'm superstitious, but because I need to check them out to make sure that nothing has changed (either my body or the clothing) that is going to result in chafing. Believe me - I will be in enough pain. Chafing is the last thing I need.
4. Shoes: This is also the time to take stock of my shoes. My race day shoes currently have 271 miles on them. I have 95 miles left on the plan (including race day). I alternate shoes during training, which means I'll have around 320 miles on my race day pair. I typically put about 400 miles on shoes, so I should be safe.

So there you go. Enough to keep me busy for a couple days. On the schedule today - hill repeats. Six of them. Hey! Aren't I supposed to be tapering?