Confessions

Now it's time to be honest. These last few weeks have been tough for me. Ever since my really bad bout of over-training, I've become extra cautious. So these last two weeks haven't been the kind of miles I usually expect this close to a marathon taper.

Week of Sept 18 - 26.5 miles. (plus 15 backpacking)
Week of Sept 25 - 38 miles <<---normal.
Week of Oct 2 - 24 miles

Starting today, this is the last week before the marathon taper, with a mini half marathon taper. Why haven't you seen any tempo runs lately? Because I haven't been doing them. Even the thought of them made me nervous. They all went well until the first week listed above. Then I dropped them completely.

It is really hard for me to back off. But I feel like I really did it properly this time. This is a breakthrough for me. The fear of over-training and having poor performance for something I've spent so long training for really motivates me to take rest when I need to. Although these few weeks have felt more like two steps forward, one step back, I think they got my energy back to where it was.

Last night, while I was thinking about my running for the upcoming week, I thought of a tempo run. For the first time in three weeks, I was excited about the idea of going fast. Deciding to give myself one last confidence boost and enough recovery time before next Sunday's Humboldt Redwoods Half Marathon, I laced up my "fast" running shoes this morning. I didn't want to have any chance of this turning out to be a bad experience and make myself feel even worse going into the race, so I kept the tempo portion to 3 miles, a distance I was sure I could nail. If I had any leftover energy at three miles, I could continue on at a slightly slower pace. And I did.

That last mile was meant to be at MRP, but I just decided to ignore the watch and go on what felt good. 8:10/mi felt good? Even though I can sometimes convince myself that I'm not making progress based on one bad run, it's undeniably there.

Now I am going into this mini-taper week with the confidence that I'm going to make my goal. That feels so good.