Sunday, July 29, 2007

Beginning to taper

Since I was still so stiff on Wednesday, I took Thursday and Friday off, rather than just Thursday, to recover. That brings me to yesterday's long run.

After last Saturday's long run (the 12 miler) those of us training for the Chicago Half were to begin tapering, which means cutting back on mileage and beginning to rest. The race is two weeks from today. You can't build much endurance in two weeks and the last thing you want to do is fatigue your muscles right before the race. Our schedule said that we were all to run 90 minutes at yesterday's long run. However, our coach emailed us Friday night to say that those of us who are tapering should feel free to cut the 90 minutes back to 60 or even 45 if we were still feeling stiff from the timed run, or just feeling fatigued in general. Meg still wasn't feeling 100% and my legs still weren't really in the game, so we planned to run for 45 minutes. We ended up running for 60. This week, Meg was pushing me along. We ran the first 3 miles at a good pace. After about 4 miles I definitely slowed down a bit. My legs just weren't playing along. My legs feel better today than they have in about a week, so I'm encouraged. I hope and think that the worst of the muscle tiredness is behind me. I have a race to go enjoy! As Meg said, perhaps she had her fatigue, then I just had mine, and now we can move on. On a side note, the weather was pretty nice! It's been humid but cool in the mornings.

And a great update--I've met my fundraising goal! Thank you SO much to everyone who contributed!

Life is a little hectic between now and the race so I may not update this much. I'm really looking forward to a good race day. TWO WEEKS TO GO!!

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