T-6 Days

I've been a bit surprised that I don't seem to be suffering from many of the 'taper week' symptoms that I have read so much about.  This is not an easy time, despite the fact that mileage has reduced.  You tend to get sick -- check.  You tend to worry that you are going to sustain some stupid injury that makes you unable to run your marathon -- check.  But other than that, I've been okay.  Until today.

One thing that I have read about is the fact that your runs are just not very good runs.  This might seem self-evident: you have been running a lot of miles for a lot of time and your body is tired.  So clearly you will not be running your best.  But until now, I was feeling okay about my runs.  Today, not really.

Five miles was a long five miles.  This was in no way related to the weather (61F right now!) or anything else obvious.  I think that it was more of a point where my body has decided that enough is enough and it doesn't really feel like going on runs any more.  The key thing about this phase of the taper weeks is to not panic, because you won't actually run like this on marathon day.  So say the experts.  Therefore, I shall not panic.  But it was still a surprisingly tricky run in some respects.

(The time, though, was slightly faster than the last 5 mile run I did, so clearly this is not related to performance necessarily).

I've also figured out the reason that I've been so obsessive about finishing the training program.  These taper week runs are kind of freebies: they aren't actually necessary and likely won't help your marathon in any way.  And there have definitely been a few days lately where I didn't really feel like it but went anyway (such as yesterday and for much of today's run).  However, I think that there is something in my head that wants to be able to say that I ran all of the training program, even if I don't do well for the marathon.  At least I can say I put in the time and effort.