Well, hello everyone. Why yes, I have already ran my marathon. And yes, I did fall down on the blogging job and forget to write about peak week and the lovely thing that is taper.
In an effort to maintain normalcy, here's a quick overview of how peak week went:
The last week in October, I was scheduled to run 40 miles. That is the most I have ever attempted to run in one week. I had ignored my scheduled Monday runs for the majority of October, and it was no different this week, so my weekly mileage maxed out at about 36 miles. Still pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.
On Wednesday, after work, I went out to Mission Bay to get in 10 miles. I am so thankful that Daylight Savings was a little later this year because 10 miles in complete darkness would not have been fun. Finishing double digit mileage on a week day after a full day of work made me feel like a badass.
On Saturday, I attempted to my longest run yet: 20 miles. I had struggled throughout October to keep things new and exciting with my running routes. There's only so many times you can run the boardwalk in Mission Beach before you die of boredom. I decided I would totally switch it up and run from Coronado down to Imperial Beach and back. I dropped a friend off at the airport at 6am (read: best way to get your butt out of bed for a long run) and headed over to Coronado. It wasn't even light out yet. I had my nutrition down to a science by now. Run 18 minutes, walk for 2, eat 2 Sport Beans and a swig of Nuun. It made the miles go by pretty quickly. Once I made it down to Imperial Beach the world was starting to wake up and I had company along the bike bath down the Silver Strand. As I made my way back up to Coronado, the sun came out. I was not a fan. I had liked the morning clouds. I was feeling great until about mile 17, when my feet started to hurt. I had never experienced any pain my arches before, so I was sure that meant I needed new shoes. Great, just what I wanted to spend some $$ on. I walk/ran the rest of the 3 miles back to the car and downed my chocolate milk which was conveniently waiting for me in the back seat. While I felt accomplished, I was still nervous for the remaining 6 miles on race day.
The 2 weeks of taper that followed were just as strange as everyone had made it out to be. I felt lazy and, as a result, unprepared. I felt tired and lethargic. I felt like I was loosing my edge. A few friends who had previously ran marathons assured me that this was normal, thankfully. I followed the taper schedule and ran a 3-6 miles a few days each week and still went to boot camp. I was nervous to give it my all in boot camp since I didn't want to go into race week with sore muscles so I took it easy.
When race week came around, I was excited and ready to fast forward to Sunday!
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