it's taper week ...

The Cherry Blossom 10 miler is in six days, which means I am officially in taper mode. I hate taper. I hate looking around and seeing other people running. I hate that I won't be racking up my standard mileage toward my yearly goal. I hate going to bed at night with my treadmill staring at me from across the room. I get runner's guilt. It's like I should be running a ton, but I just can't. And for me, taper is just as hard as injury. With injury you can't run. It's physically painful. With taper, the pain is mental.


But I will do it. Because I want to run with strong legs and a strong mind on race day. I taper because I want to PR. Because I want to give myself the best opportunity to push myself further than I thought.
I head into Sunday's race with a goal time of 1:25 in my head. I've never run a 10 mile race before, so regardless, I will be setting a PR. But I know, if I race like I train (something I have really been working on). I can hit that time. And if everything goes perfectly, I can run even faster. And I have the proof ...


On Friday night, I did a race pace test run. I wanted my legs to feel what 8:30's feel like. And I needed to know I could hold it. So, I jumped on the treadmill for an eight miler. The plan was two miles easy, followed by four miles at race pace, finished with a two mile cool down. But, that's not really what happened. Instead, I did my two mile warm up at a 9:22 pace (kind of my run all day pace). Then I kicked it up to an 8:20 pace (note that this is actually faster than my goal pace). And like I said, I planned on holding that for four. But, after four I felt too good. So, I tried for five. SUCCESS. So, I kicked it up again and finished the last mile in 8:06. It was awesome. My overall pace was 8:34. Just four seconds over my goal pace. Talk about a confidence boost. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I had worked. But, it didn't kill me. And when I woke up the next day, I wanted to lace up and do it all over again (Don't worry. I didn't).


Instead, I took Saturday off and geared up for Sunday's long run. G has finally been released from by the doctor and offered to join me (plus her hubby and kids were out of town, so she had no reason not to). And our buddy, K, joined us at the last minute for what ended up being a series of loops around my neighborhood.


The run was pretty much perfect. We held an easy pace filled with easy conversation. We ended up running just shy of eight miles in 1:16:22 (9:45 overall). Pretty good considering the amount of pictures we took and that we've not yet adjusted to this warmer weather. And speaking of pictures, here are some good ones ...


Huh, don't I look like a giant next to them? Anyway, I love these runs. We catch up on each other's lives. Retell crazy stories. And just enjoy being out. Basically, it was the perfect way to head into a dreaded taper ...