and this is exactly how my legs feel now... relaxed!!!Marathon Plan - Regressive Countdown - Week Three
11/10/08 - 11/16/08
Week Total: 23.1
Thanks to all friends for the boosting words last weekend. I followed some of your advices and took it easy. On Sunday I rested well, and did NOTHING, and on Monday I got home from work early enough to continue doing NOTHING.
It is tapering time. Who doesn't love it? I do. I love The Art Of Doing Nothing, or as the Italians would say, The Dolce Far Niente (The Sweetness Of Doing Nothing). Of course it is not a nothing as many would understand it, but for us runners, tapering is close to nothing. Welcome!!!
My nothingness traded Intervals on Tuesday by an easy run, and Tempo on Thu was done @ low tempo instead mid tempo.
My Saturday "not-so-long run", as my once running mate Chris F. (*) put it, was a half distance run, 13.1 miles. My goal was a 2:20 to taste the possibility of a marathon dream goal of a sub-5.
The weather conditions were PERFECT. After two weeks of pouring AND tiring rain, and scary wind storms, the rain tampered off by Thu morning, to have on Sat, a dry, sunny day at the perfect temperature of 54 F/12C with no wind. So perfect it was, that I was able to run just with a long sleeve running shirt, without my breath thermo, and that's a lot to say...
The first half happened towards my set goal, and I felt really good, but the last 6 miles, when I decided to battle it as if they were the final 6 of the marathon, were not as good as I thought they would be. For unknown reasons, my total time was 2:28 (4 minutes more than on Sep 27, Half Petra Marathon, when I wasted 2 minutes in my car); and I say unknown reasons because I don't remember either slowing down, or having any issues with shoes, water, cars, rain, wind, slippery sidewalks, etc. Maybe I am still tired.
Oh well, no analysis was decided, and we'll see what happens on Marathon Day. Two more weeks!!!
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(*) Chris F.: I know that it is not possible to run a race together next year. Running together the Tidal Basin Race in DC was so much fun, and I hope that by 2010 we join again to race somewhere....
6 comments:
Hey Lizzie! Did you see that Eric and I are last minute Seattle runners? We're doing three marathons in three days - a small trail marathon in Gig Harbor, the Ghost and Seattle. See you there!
I'm back - I just saw your comment on my post. Yes, we should plan to meet. We'll be going by the expo after the Ghost, but I don't have any idea what time. We might stay in town that night, so we could leave it loose. Email me!
Even though you slowed down a bit, it looks like the "nothing" did some good! You are going to ROCK the marathon in 2 weeks!
Often I just run for time and forget about pace and don't worry so much about distance run. Sometimes I think my mind needs a break more than my body and I do more harm than good by beating myself up about not going as fast as I'd hoped in a training run.
Enjoy your last two weeks of tapering!
Enjoy the taper!
Lizzie Lee honey you're not doing these runs for speed now - it's all there in the system. I'm glad you took a break - take a leaf out of Shirley Perly's book (another type A personality, I'm just guessing) and go for some runs without a watch, or cover it up till afterwards. Resting and taking it easy is really really important in your taper! And happy birthday!
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