Is It Taper Time Yet?

Four weeks and counting. I feel like I say this all the time, but time is flying. It feels like just yesterday I was in the boot and the thought of running Philly, let alone racing it, was a huge stretch. Now here I am, 4 weeks out, counting down my last week so I can get to taper!

I was doing fine and feeling like I wasn't ready for the taper until this past Saturday. After the marathon the previous Sunday I didn't take any time off to recover. Not only that, I didn't take my runs nice and easy like I probably should have. On Thursday night I headed out for 7 miles and decided to just keep the workout easy with some strides. Well, after four strides I wanted to see what else I could do so I ran a few miles at marathon pace. The pace felt hard and my legs were screaming, but I pushed through. When I got into bed a few hours later, my legs were aching so badly and I couldn't get comfortable. Needless to say, when the alarm went off at 5am Friday morning, I knew the 5 miles I had in front of me wouldn't be pretty. Being half asleep probably didn't help but I could not get moving and my legs had nothing in them. Let's just say it was one of the longest 5 milers I've had. I didn't even bother to look at my pace because at the end, I was just happy to have finished it.

I tried to stay off my feet the best I could on Friday because I had an 18 miler and a blogger meet up with Abby on Saturday. Unfortunately, that didn't really help and my legs felt like lead the entire run. Thankfully there was good conversation and getting-to-know-you-talk to keep me going!! Abby is so sweet and I'm glad we finally got to meet up. Unfortunately there's no picture, Abby headed out for 2 more miles and there was no way I had any more left in me at that point.

After the run I threw on some recovery socks and Andy and I headed out to plant trees along the Green Ribbon Trail. We were volunteering to support an Eagle Scout project to restore trees which were attacked by some Japanese plant species. It was really nice to be out there doing something good for the environment. Anyway, when we were done, I crashed on the couch and didn't move the rest of the night. After a hard week of running, I topped it off with 45 minutes on the spin bike yesterday and am now begging for taper to start. One...more...week....

Here's my schedule for the week:
Mon - 5 mi
Tues - 8 mi (with 6 mi at MP)
Wed - cross train/lift
Thurs - 8 mi (with 4 mi at MP)
Fri - 5 mi
Sat - 20 mi
Sun - cross train/lift

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