Tapering

Hey guys! This time tomorrow I should be almost finished with my first half marathon. Amazing. I've been training for 3 months to get here, and it's been an interesting and rewarding experience. I'm so excited about the expo and dinner tonight and THE RACE tomorrow!

I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep, when I remembered that this blog is about running and I should be blogging about the things I learn as I go. I've been kind of slack about this, so here we go.

Tapering.

Yeah, that thing you're supposed to do before big races to let your muscles rest and build up glycogen and all of that fun stuff. I know it's great for your body and wouldn't ever NOT do it, but it's really messing with my mind!

As I said before, I've been training for 3 months. That's 3 months of pushing myself to distances I never even imagined I would run (hello: 13.1 miles!) and going stir crazy the week and a half that I had to sideline myself for my ankle injury. After all that motivation and constant going, it freaks you out when this happens:

Me: "Okay body, we've got a week before show time. Our runs this week are only 7, 5 and 4 miles."
Body: "WHAT!?! LAZY TIME!"

Yeah, since I had to do the elliptical on Wednesday (we all how much I love those...not), my last outdoor run before the half was yesterday's 4 miles. I got Lindsey to go with me, and as I mapped out the four miles (we actually did 4.35, but who's counting?) I just thought it was nothing. We're only running around the battery once? What? During training, I've been bad about only running 3x a week, when my training plan called for 4x. I just skipped my Saturday 4 milers because a) I'm lazy on Saturdays and b) I really thought, what's the point of going out if I'm only doing 4 miles?.

Let's reflect for a moment. Three months ago I couldn't even run 4 miles, and now I'm saying it's nothing. Let's appreciate that fact for a second. WOW. Also, that's an extra 400 calories I could be burning. 400 calories = 18.8 Hershey kisses. Just saying.

ANYWAY, back to the tapering thing. The whole time I was running yesterday and this week, I was second guessing myself. My run Monday wasn't the best 7 miles. It made me start to think that maybe I can't run 13.1 miles. It's hard to remind yourself that you did it less than 2 weeks ago and that your body can handle it. You're actually recovering more and letting your muscles build up. Yesterday was really short and only averaged about 10:50, when my race goal is 10:00 flat. That number was just discouraging. It's hard to remember that you stopped at crosswalks and didn't get to your super fast catch-up 7-9 miles. Moral of the story: don't second guess yourself and 3 months of training!

I think that's the biggest battle I'll be struggling with tomorrow: my mentality. If I can get over that (and my ankle and anterior tib hold on for one last run) I should do awesome.

And if nothing else, tonight's dinner and goodie bag will cheer me up!

-Jess

Visions that will be dancing through my head tonight!