How Last Week's Taper Went

Even my husband noticed that last week's miles were low. I'm on taper. It's 10 days until I run the Chattanooga Stage Race. And you know your physical taper is REALLY tapered when your husband points it out.

After so many weekends of either travel or long runs, Steve and I wanted at least one weekend day for brunch with the family. So Saturday I didn't run, and we and the girls headed down to North Dallas to try a new brunch place we'd heard of recently. We love our brunches - great french toast, spicy Migas, even breakfast tacos. With any combo of eggs, meats (chorizo, bacon, sausage), cheeses, and breads/pastries, I'm in heaven. Well, this brunch place's food and service were unfortunately very underwhelming.

So Sunday was a "kill 8 birds with one stone" morning. I needed 10 miles. I wanted to cheer for friends running a triathlon. I wanted to be in the company of amazing people. I knew I should blanket some cars with Showdown Half flyers for advertising. Elaine and I met up at 6 AM that morning in Las Colinas, ran a few miles, cheered friends, put out flyers, cheered some more, and had to leave to get back to the rest of the day. I hadn't realized with watching for multiple friends spread out on the course plus 3 sports plus multiple loops for the bike and run portions, getting in those 10 miles was just not going to happen. Then I had a fun day with my lovely family.

Yes, I had a 4 mile weekend. Add to it Marissa's strep throat last week with an evening urgent care visit, and my runs were less than I would have anticipated too. I ended last week with 27 miles.

But one of those runs in there was speedwork, and I hit all my 200m and 800m repeat target paces for that 5.5 miles. And yes, I could have panicked about getting more miles, but how would forcing that help me overall?

It's a taper. It's about rest. About recovery. About sleep. About getting ready for the task at hand. The last thing that will help is to a) give up sleep to force in a run, b) screw up my diet or routines to force in a run, or c) stress out over work deadlines that occurred last week that I would miss if I had forced in a run.

Now let's see how this week goes. 18 miles in my training plan from Coach Jeremy. He knows my mental health determines my fitness race day more than lots of miles in the taper, so we're both focused on giving me the freshest legs possible for when the race starts.