Taper, taper, taper . . . .

I am about 5 days from the Boston Marathon, in the taper down phase of my training plan. That puts a ton of doubts in my head about the race because I am not training aggressively right up to race day. One side of my brain thinks that I should be out running like crazy, going as fast as I can. The other side of my brain pretty much tells me to relax, go run the race.

I had my APFT this morning, part of that test is a 2 mile run for time. I have never had any problems getting a maximum score on the run. Because I am in taper mode, I had another crisis in faith during that. I was warming up for the 2 mile portion of the test, running a slow mile before the 2 mile, and I wasn’t feeling very strong during the warm up. Once again, one side of my brain was panicking, feeling weak and un-prepared, screaming out that I was in terrible shape, my taper plan was not going to work . . . . blah, blah, blah. The other side of my brain reminded me that I had donea ton of high quality running, including 4 x 20 mile runs during the train up, none of those had my pace below 7:30, 2 of them I was at a 7:24 or below pace. Of course, when I started to run, all that went straight out of my head and I turned on the jets, but not all the way. I turned a 12:26 for the two miles, which was good enough, I am pretty sure I could have gone much faster, but I didn’t want to jeopardize the marathon for the APFT.

Mike, Mary and Dixie (Mike and Mary's dog that only likes me because I throw the ball for her) made a donation, bringing me close to 1200 bucks. I have a few more irons in the fire, so that should increase. Thanks!