I Suck at Taper

It should really come as no surprise that I suck at tapering. Don't get me wrong: I take no issue with the reduced mileage that goes with taper. In fact, I got lazy last week and cut my 12-miler to an 8-miler for no real good reason (unless work to do and company coming over count as good reasons). But the whole "trust in your training" thing? Yeah, I suck at that. I feel undertrained and unprepared, and now you're telling me that it's too late to do anything about that? Hello, taper: You sort of suck.

I was a major pain in the ass in the weeks leading up to my first half-marathon. Checking the weather every five seconds (which didn't do a bit of good, though it did turn out that running 13.1 miles in a torrential downpour wasn't as bad as you'd think) and obsessing about every possible detail. I expect that this time around, I'll be twice as bad (which seems only fair since we're talking about twice the distance). I'm already feeling a little panicky about recent reports of friends throwing up at school, friends with fevers, friends with strep. I want to enclose myself in a bubble for the next two weeks because to get sick now... (And then secretly I think: Yes, but if you get sick, you won't have to run the marathon silly!)

Taper is not for the neurotic.

I've had several people tell me in recent weeks that the marathon is mostly a mental game. Which means I'm certainly sunk (especially if you go back and read my training reports!!).

And to make matters worse, I still don't know what I'm wearing. And it's only a matter of time before weather reports will be available for me to obsess over.

I expect next week will be worse because mileage drops considerably. This week we're looking at: 4, 6, 3, and 8. Next week? 3, 4, 2, 26.2.

What have I gotten myself into??


On the upside, sleeping is one of the 10 rules of taper. Now THAT I can do.