Well, after that 20 miler last weekend, this week is really rather boring. What I've been finding out is how hard it really is to run any distance after 20 miles. My body totally needed extra rest days, so I only managed a 4 mile run, as well as the 12 miler. Both runs were hard. I didn't even go to the fun run this week to give myself some extra rest. With my four miler, at this point, you would think that I would be thinking, "Hey, it's ONLY 4 miles." I call bull on that one because that was a run that kicked my butt all over the place. Granted, I was trying to run a bit faster as a way to work on speed, and I took a few different roads, as I have been super board with running some of the same routes. However, I think I ran too hard, because I ended up wearing myself out too soon, so I needed walk breaks. The one good thing about the run was that I briefly met up with two other female runners, who seemed to be younger than me. Little did they know that I was "racing" them, and they were pretty fast. I managed to hold them off for a few blocks, although they were just steps behind me. However, I heard one of the runners say something along the lines of, "Oh. This feels easy." That messed with my head a bit as that run was anything BUT easy for me. I was really glad to have that run behind me.
As for my 12 miler...again, same thought...if I ran 20 last weekend, 12 should be easy, right? Oh.heck.no. That run also kicked my butt. I even found that I could take full packages of GU beforehand, and about 4-5 miles in, be okay, and that was still a rough run. Is it normal to have very rough runs like this in taper weeks? I even had the nasty thought of "What if I don't finish this marathon" pop in to my head, which I had to mentally push out of my head. I will only DNF this race due to an extreme emergency where it's not safe for me to do the race. I literally had to tell my brain, "'Did Not Finish' trumps 'Did Not Start.' Unless there's an exterme circumstance, you WILL be finishing the marathon, so shut up and keep moving." I have no idea what my pace was, as I didn't bring my watch (forgot to charge it), but I think I finished the run somewhere around 2:30, which was definitely slower than a few weeks ago. I think some of it may have been temperature related, as it was in the 60s with sunshine. I have to admit, the gentle breezing was welcoming, as this was warmer weather run than I have done in a while, so t that probably affected my energy some, too. I'm hoping that on race day, we'll have maybe some slightly cooler weather, but still warm enough for me to comfortably run in a pair of capris and a t-shirt or tank top.
As I go into next week, my hope is to get in more of the shorter distance runs, and maybe hit a slightly longer mid-distance run for a change. I'm only suppose to do 8 miles for the long run, which is entirely do-able. After that, I'm really hoping to get really good rest for most of the remaining two weeks, so that I can be ready to go on race day.
20 days and counting down.....
Janet
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