I love taper and it couldn't have come at a more perfect time! Last week and this week I have been swamped at work, I'm dealing with my Gmail account getting hacked and I feel like I'm sort of falling behind on life, so running has really taken a back seat.

But hey, that's kind of the whole point of taper, to run shorter and easier and give your legs lots of time to recover.

I've also been enjoying stuffing my face with carbs. My waistline might not like it, but come race day I will have plenty of fuel in the tank!

Training So Far:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine

Week Ten:


Monday: 6 x 800

Last round of speed work for this training cycle. My legs sort of felt like bricks, but I pushed through and got it done.

Tuesday: Rest

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: 3 miles easy

Friday: Rest

Saturday: 4 miles easy

This was supposed to be a six miler, but I had some terrible cramping and major tightness in my calves, so I decided to cut it short. I stopped to stretch a few times on the run, but nothing really seemed to loosen my legs up. At this point in training, better to call it short and spend more time stretching than push it and mess something up.

Sunday: Football playoffs

Football playoffs were awesome. We had a double header, with a pretty impressive come from behind victory in the first game. Unfortunately we lost in the semi-finals, which ended our season. My legs took a beating in the games though. The first game we were down a player, so there was a ton of extra running around. I also got cleated in ankle and accidentally tackled a couple of times throughout the day.

Needless to say I'm sore and I'm using the early part of this week to rest and recover. I'm hoping for two nice and easy runs sometime in the remainder of this week and then I'll be good to go come race day.

Four more days! Can't wait!

I have the weirdest form of taper madness ever.

Some people get all antsy that they can't run and end up squeezing in extra runs.

I however have the opposite probably. I'm antsy as heck for the race to get here, but I'm not trying to do a lot of running in the meantime. Instead, I'm doing a lot of resting.

For some reason come taper time, I look at the runs I have planned and think they're too much, that I shouldn't be pushing that hard and that I should take more rest time to let my legs recover.

The last thing I want to to show up on race day with dead legs.

So during taper I am extremely liberal with my rest. In fact, I'm probably much too liberal, so I'm setting some goals for this round of tapering.

Ideally I'd like to get two more runs in this week and then do three easier runs next week to keep my legs feeling fresh, but rested for race day. I'm not going to push it too hard in the runs. I just want to get some quality time on my feet in before the race.

I've also been noticing some major tightness in my hips and quads lately. I should probably put taper to good use and spend some quality time with the foam roller working out some of the tightness.

Just a little more than a week until race day! I wish it would hurry up and get here already.

Taper is making me mad.

All last night on the metro ride home I was fantasizing about going for a nice easy five mile run. Seriously, it was all I could think about.

I even tried rationalizing it to myself on Twitter.





When I got home, I thought long and hard about going for a run, but finally convinced myself that I just need to roll with my taper.

My training is in the books. Nothing I can do at this point is going to get me any more ready for this race.



So instead of a five-mile run, I cleaned and organized my bedroom and then did some yoga. Cleaning helped release some of the pent-up energy I was carrying around, and the yoga really helped stretch out my legs.

It all paid off this morning in an awesome four mile run that was part of my training plan.

I wish the race would hurry up and get here. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold off the taper madness.

With only a few days left until the Philly Rock N Roll Half Marathon, I'm officially in taper mode.

It's time to slash mileage, top off my glycogen stores and get my legs in prime shape for race day.

The reason for tapering after months of training is to make sure your legs are well rested on race day. At this point, there's not much you can do to improve your overall fitness before the race. That work needed to be done over the last two months. So this final stretch before the race is all about taking it easy and keeping everything loose.

While the severe decrease in mileage can make some people go nuts (it's called taper madness for a reason), I'm trying to keep my wits about me.

Here's my plan for taper:

1. Get in two solid runs this week.
2. Stretch, foam roll, use the Stick to work out any lingering muscle kinks.
3. Get enough sleep. Being well rested is crucial for race-day performance.
4. Increase intake of "good" carbs, while decreasing the crap, like candy, cookies, etc.
5. Hydrate like crazy.

It's a pretty basic plan, but it's going well so far.

I was excited that this week's "long" run was only seven miles. It gave me plenty of time to shower, run some errands and get to College Park in time for our first home game tailgate.



I didn't have tickets for the game, but the Terps came out on top 62-3.

Scores from other teams I care about:
Notre Dame lost to Michigan 28-24. Dagger.
The Eagles lost to the Packers 27-20. Blame this on bad playing calling and starting QB choice by Andy Reid.
Terp soccer tied Boston College 1-1.

I love the start of fall sports season and I'm going to try to love this week of taper and not go nuts with such majorly decreased mileage.

How do you stay sane during taper week?

I saw this RealAge test thingy on my friend's blog and decided to play along. Basically it takes into account your lifestyle (nutrition, fitness, etc.) and determines how old you are inside as compared to your actual age. It's kind of fun and if you have a minute, you might want to check it out. My RealAge was 15, seven and a half years younger than my actual age.