Marathon Taper

Here I am one week into my "tone it down and taper" for the Gate City Marathon. I never understood all the jokes warning a marathon runner about taper, and how crazy they can be. I mean I tapered for my half but that wasn't a big deal.

Wow. This time around it's nuts. I'm completed food paranoid between my allergies and food poisoning. I saw a tick and freaked out about home much a round of antibiotics would wreck me this close to a race. I had sushi and then panicked for 24 hours that it might have been a mistake. I'm lucky my husband loves me and knows this is temporary.



While I did a great job during training of getting in all my long runs. I did not do a good job with the weekday runs. I did better this week, I tried to worry less about getting the planned number of miles and focus more on getting outside to run.

I learned many things over the last few weeks, some of them I knew intellectually. I needed to experience them first hand to KNOW them. I have written many a blog post in my head but never committing it to the computer.

I've got many disjointed thoughts, so I think I will organize them in gratitude, annoyances and miscellaneous thoughts.

Gratitudes

My understanding husband. I run slow and when I leave for a weekend long run, it means hours in the day (generally morning) where he is alone with our kids, without having the ability to tag out, and then when I return, he has cooked up a HUGE lunch for me. If I request, he'll even make a fresh pot of coffee so I can have some. Not to mention creating a cheering section fb post when I was dragging on my 20 mile run. Seriously, I love this guy.

My parents, and my in-laws. Their support, and encouragement has been a huge help for me. Many of my awesome outfits this winter were Christmas gifts from them. Not everyone understands that new sneakers, compression socks and running skirts, make fantastic gifts for me, but my family gets me.

My chiropractor, and my acupuncturist. Their care has helped me minimize the problems associated with some stuff I'll discuss in my annoyance section.

Skirt for Marathon. Picture from 20 mile run

My best friend, who is too far away to run with or even meet for coffee, but listens to all my whining about stuff, and never complains about any of my weird run selfies, or my "hey look what I found" texts.

Many, many, running friends who have encouraged me and texted with me, when I needed to break the 15 miles barrier, and I was starting to get worried about it.

A running friend I met through the She Runs This Town group. My 20 mile run ended up being on a Friday, I worried I'd be running it totally alone. She was available and ran with me for several miles in the beginning. Knowing I was meeting up with her, helped me get started that day.

Annoyances

Remember  that week I didn't eat, I forget, did I talk about that here? When I ran 13 miles after doing that. I hurt myself. I did my best to recover without resting. I compounded the problem by getting new sneakers with a different heel drop.  Then I ran 27+ miles on them over 4-5 runs. On top of that, I continued to use a running vest (but filled it with water bottles). This seemed like an awesome idea, until the last 2 weeks when my back started seizing up while running, requiring me to stop multiple times to stretch out. I figured it out on my 20 mile run. When I ran without the vest, I was fine. With the vest, back pain. Sometimes I'm slow to figure things out, but there it was in front of me. With the vest I added 2 pounds of weight to my chest.  2 POUNDS, plus all the other stuff I love to stuff in the vest because I had room.  What you don't carry twice the needed gu packets. just in case?

My head space is a strange location. I spend time with people who have run many marathons, so in a way I minimize my efforts and challenges. I mean my peers can all run 20 miles, why am I making it out to be a big deal? I need to do a better job acknowledging that this is a BIG deal. I am doing something awesome. Who cares if I'm slow, that creates it's own challenges.

Coffee, why? I had to give up coffee on long run days until after I had run. It wasn't doing good things for me. I had to give up coffee and anything with caffeine for over 2 weeks.

Weight Loss, honestly this will end up it's own post at some point. I've lost almost too much weight and I'm struggling to eat enough calories. I get busy and I'm lucky if I'm eating 3 meals a day with out snacking. When I lose too much weight I get fragile and it makes it harder to heal from my "I can power through this" injuries.

Random Thoughts

I'm completely fixated on what shirt I will wear for the marathon (because that is SUPER important am I right?). When I was using the running vest it wasn't as big a deal, because the shirt would be covered. Without the vest, my shirt won't be covered. I'm almost irrational with this fixation. I can't wear my two bright orange shirts since they were volunteer shirts for previous years of this race and I don't want to be confused with them while running a course. I have my awesome shirt from Taji 100, but it's olive green and maybe not the best match for my pink running skirt. I have the 2020 VisionQuest shirt from last year, but it is black and was crazy hot, so I'm not sure I want to do that, when I know I'll be running for nearly or more than 6 hours. I've considered ordering a shirt from Skirt Sports, but I'm running out of time to try new clothing. Though if this years weather is anything like last years weather, I'll start with a shirt on, and end in just a sports bra.

Seriously, I grew up as a sports playing tomboy and NOW I'm worried about clothing?  Who am I?  What has running done to me?

I still need to test my marathon hydration and caloric fuel plan. My skirt pockets are big enough to hold my phone and fuel (gu,clif blok, & ernduralyte pills), but I won't have any water with me. There is a water stop on the course every 1.5 miles or so, which means getting water won't be an issue, I just won't be able to drink it whenever I want to. I don't imagine this will be a problem until I need to gu, as I like to eat and sip water at the same time. This also means I need a friend at the start/finish/loop transition area that could pass me one of my gus if I need an extra. I won't need this until 4 hours into the race.

Then there is the Finish Line photo, another irrational area of fixation. What do I want to look like?  Should I take practice pictures to see if the pose looks as cool in the picture as it feels when it's taken? Is anyone going to be taking any pictures? I don't think this race has an official photographer, so it's down to will my friends be available when it's time to take the picture. Can't ask husband, as he will have two possibly bored children to corral on a crowded sidewalk.

Then there is What's Next? I don't want to stop running, and I fear if I don't have a goal for after this race, I will. I want to start working on speed. I have a suspicion that being slow is more a mental thing than a physical thing. I want to work on that and see if I can improve my pace, possibly manage a sub 70 min 10k.

The picture proving to my friends I had made it 15 miles!

Wow, this got long. I think I'll end it here, have my husband edit, and then pick out a few pictures to make this more interesting to look at. By the way, my sons baseball league is selling raffle calendars for $5 to raise money for the league. Send me an email/private message or what not if you are interested in one or details about the raffle.  Most of the prizes are Nashua area specific.