"Taper Time"

I’m back a little earlier than usual to follow up on my training.  The case being I’m on taper and have much more free time now that I’ve cut back on my miles.  I have very mixed feelings about tapering and to be quite honest I dislike it very much.  Unlike most of my running companions who look forward to cutting back their miles after months of training, I cannot comfortably operate in normal society when I’m not running crazy miles and forcing myself to rest is not a good thing.  I had a dream last night that I was running across the country on my way to Boston for a cup of clam chowder, a little “Smokey and the Bandit” influence there but I woke up in a real funk realizing that I won’t be able to do any runs longer than 10 miles for the next week.   I am going to suck it up and make the best of it though, I just keep thinking only 10 more days to taper and once I hit my goal in QC I can spend the rest of the year gobbling up the road until I’ve satisfied my hunger for mileage.

My taper will be consist of two weeks of cutting back on mileage and increasing speedwork.  I had built up to just shy of 100 miles a week, week 3 I cut back to 75, week 2 about 50 and the marathon week I’ll only have about 25 miles in.    The idea behind the plan is to allow my legs to recover with the cutback on miles but also work the speedwork during this recovery period to get the legs all ready to rock the faster pace.  So far it’s felt pretty good, my Tuesday track workouts I nailed all of my splits and finished off with 200 sets clocking in at 27 seconds or about a 3:40 pace.. I was very happy with the times and my quick recovery.   I’ve also been doing a little more cross training with some swimming and lifting just to keep my body active, I’ll cut out most of that towards the middle and end of next week for my final prep.

So with a little over a week away from the big day overall I’m feeling very well about everything, I normally feel like I could have done more but I’m already closing in on 2,000 miles for the year, over 20 races and consistent PRs in every distance I’ve raced in this year so I really feel like I’ve got this one down… it will all be up to my mental toughness the day of and that is something I cannot train for but I am pretty damn stubburn and I’ll play that card to my advantage all day long.

"Marathon Madness"

So when we last left off I was transitioning from Triathlon training into Marathon training, the last 3 weeks have gone just awesome… so well in fact that I have made the decision to add an additional marathon to my schedule about 8 weeks ahead of my original plan.  I had been ramping up my miles and training specifically for the Madison Marathon in November however after completing several 20+ mile runs feeling great and recently PR’ing my ½ marathon time with a 1:23 I feel like hitting a sub 3:05 to qualify for Boston is within my reach.    

So the first stop on the train to Boston will be the Quad Cities Marathon in Davenport, Iowa on September 28^th and I hope to hit a 3:02 time with a secondary goal of sub 3 hours.  The course at Quad Cities is pretty flat and fast, a contrast to the more hilly Madison course so I think it will be a good pick as my first attempt to BQ…  it is also a very well organized and fun race, I ran the relay there last year and had a great time with it.  My game plan right now is to start off around a 6:50 pace which would put me just below a 3:00 time and if I feel well I’ll try and push a bit at the end.  This is all new to me and I plan to make mistakes but hopefully none that will affect my time too much.

Looking ahead past Quad Cities I have a 50K trail race in Waterloo/Cedar Falls on October 11^th and then the Madison Marathon on November 9^th.   To conquer these two in a decent time I plan on doing a shorter 2 week taper for Quad Cities and plan on picking back up on my original plan following the QC race this month.  Depending on how everything goes in QC I may cut back the intensity and just enjoy the ride for the remainder of the year but knowing me that is very doubtful J.   I am very excited to test my legs these next couple months to see how I do in the longer races, I’m still a marathon newbie but I’m hoping after this autumn crash course I’ll feel much more comfortable moving into next year where I’ve already set some pretty large goals for myself.