Tapering

Yes, friends. After logging in those massive amount of miles the past few weeks, I am now resting those legs. And, boy, am I!

After all, they're exhausted from running whopping 20-mile weeks!

Of course I'm joking. What I'm not joking about, though, is the amount of taper that I'm doing. With Kona less than a week away, and with my fitness not going to magically reappear on the scene, I've decided to really try, instead, to get my quad back into fighting shape and to really limit the amount of miles that I do before the race.

Instead of a 40-mile week this week, I'm shooting for more like a 22-mile week, running Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. I'll try to throw in some masochistic stretching, a.k.a. 'yoga', to try to stave off the edginess I am already feeling as the result of having comparatively little exercise for almost the past month. (I've never tapered for a month before. I think that's what the experts call 'excessive'.) And then, next week, I'll likely only run once - sometime, a day or two before the race, to get the legs back into some sort of gear and to ease the plane stiffness.

My two enemies right now are that edginess and the desire to eliminate that edginess. During work yesterday, I had to force myself to focus on one task at a time, instead of flitting from task to task as they came up on my radar, leaving each in a different stage of completion. The focusing worked but it took a lot of effort. And, so, often, I find myself wandering over to the fridge, or to the corner store. After all, eating constantly while grading eliminates grading edginess. Why not non-exercise edginess?

Of course, one of the worst things would be to arrive a the starting line poorly trained, (hopefully) newly uninjured, and 10 pounds heavier. I think I need to stock up on celery.

As a bonus, I've read 3 books in the past week, have kept up on the crossword and have had the chance to watch sporting events galore! Even had a chance to catch up with some people I hadn't seen in a while. Maybe this is why some people think running as much (or as little) as I usually do is slightly crazy.

I hope the course in Hawai'i is as beautiful as I'm imagining. Given the time it will likely take for me to run it, I think I'll bring my camera. Look for some ocean shots sometime after the 27th.

Puzzle today: 5:36. Not bad for a semi-hack. The themes for the beginning of the week, as silly as they are, really amuse me. There's also a pun on 'switch' in this one. I love puns!