Tuesday, October 5, 2010

a little inspiration & a little taper

With a combo of being laid up on the couch for a few days after a rough crash on a run (yes, a run) and finally getting my own laptop (after a couple of years without my own), I've finally committed to getting some posts up.

What I'm thinking about these days is the taper, and, the scramble to recover from injury in time for a race - aka 'forced' taper.  So there has been some downtime - and I'll post some great articles I've read through in the last few days later.  For now, the taper.

The Taper: 
 I've gone through tapers before, and as hard as they are to commit to the taper, they really do work.  I've found one of the hardest workouts to do this week was the 20 min 'easy' run.  All your body wants to do is tear down the road, when everything feels so easy.  You've got to stop when it's easy, pull yourself away from that need to feel a hard workout, something you love to do.  So it's hard, but it has to be done.

 The taper is test number one in confidence, with test two to come up in the first 5-10 kilometres of the race when you need to stick to your plan and race how you've planned to race.  I hope I can do that this Sunday in Victoria.  My plan is to stick to a pace and hold it for the first half of the race - 21 kilometres - and not to go too fast.

 My last marathon was a negative split and I've never felt so good running a marathon (and it was during an Ironman, so that has to say something about negative splitting).  My marathon earlier this year was just about even splits, just positive by about 40 seconds, and that felt pretty good too.  So I believe it - I just have to do it.

I also have to throw a few pennies in the running gods fountain and hope my knee shows up to run.  All these things are possible.  I'm excited for marathon Sunday in Victoria!

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