For some reason in my mind I am celebrating the start of the taper like this is the end of the road and the race is already over. Stupid but I can’t help it. Last week was an absolute beast and from purely time management standpoint the start of the taper will make my life infinity easier. That is not to say it will be easy, the point is to try and get some juice back into my zombie legs but still maintain some fitness.

Last week beat me like I was the Giants secondary. The 10-mile tempo run was brutal, I mean a 10-mile run in general is no walk in the park but the pace changing was torture. I thought it went well, I mean I was kind of rushing it because I was trying to the see The Joker but my watch got messed up and I wound up feeling like I needed to run a little extra. The tempo itself was fast, doing a quick mile 5 separate times really pushed me. To follow that up with a nice 8-miler the next day was death.

As for the other two runs, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself on the day off, Friday’s run came around and I felt great. Kept the pace night and light, ending with 4 rounds of strides, which entailed a pushed pace for 30 seconds followed by a 1:30 minute recoverary. Helped with staying loose.

The obvious beast was the 22-mile monster. I ran it Saturday, which was good because it was a nice cloudy 60 degrees when I started. The run went smoothly, I did a 14-mile loop followed by an 8-mile loop. Took the goo at mile 6, a quarter of a banana at mile 14 and another goo thing at mile 18. Hydrated at miles 7, 14 and 19. No real outlying difficulties besides overall pain in my entire being. My knees were hurting but nothing crippling. I thought I kept a solid enough pace, I mean it was a lot slower than some of my other training runs but I wasn’t too concerned. I listened to almost 4 straight hours of the audiobook though so expect Friday’s blog to be a monster. Having to run 6 miles the next day fucking sucked though. O well it’s in the past now.

Lets take a look at the upcoming week. The big runs are 8 and 14 miles, don’t really anticipate much of an issue with either of them. The 14-miler I might try and push the pace just to get used to running a little harder. Prob not though. The workouts are a 6-mile interval and a 4-mile hill run. Hill run will be the most fun of the week. Well that is all I got. Stay in school.