After last week’s not so fantastic training I was determined to get back in the right frame of mind this week. And I’m happy to say that I loved week 13 – I guess maybe 13 isn’t an unlucky number after all. I may have enjoyed it a bit too much…the training plan called for 36 miles but I ended up doing right around 57. (To be fair 16.5 of those miles were from cycling.) My legs are pretty trashed…
Week 13 started out on a somber note as I ran 3.1 miles for my brother’s 31st birthday Monday morning and then ran my scheduled training run Monday night. Tuesday’s run was 8 miles of speed work (Yassos) which means lots of running in loops. Sounds boring right? Well it can be but on this particular run I got to make a new friend – yay!
My training partner Stacey and I were running and noticed an elderly gentleman sitting in a wheelchair on his porch. I waved at him the first time we ran by and he waived back. The second time we ran by he gave us a thumbs-up; the third go-round he yelled to us that we were “looking good”. Well by the 4th Yasso I couldn’t stand it anymore so I stopped and trotted up his ramp (he looked a bit frightened… I can’t blame him; I was covered in sweat) and introduced myself. I told him if I was going to keep running by him we at least needed to know each other. His name was Duckie – how cool!! We chatted briefly, I told him how much his cheering meant to us and then Stacey and I continued on. Duckie continued to cheer us on for the next few Yassos – he totally made my night.
Thursday’s run was a marathon pacing session; nothing worthwhile to report there. Then it was time to get ready for my last 20 miler! It’s so hard to believe that I was getting ready for my last long run before I start tapering. After my epic 21 mile run two weeks ago I had really high hopes for this run but I’m not going to lie, this was a super difficult run. We (me + my training girls) spent the first 3(ish) miles in the pitch black dodging open man-holes (no joke, I wouldn’t be surprised if a person went missing from falling in one) and jumping huge sections of the sidewalk that were torn up from Hurricane Isaac. Not off to a good start. Then we tackled a huge incline and since this was an out and back run that meant that we would be tackling the same huge incline at mile 15.5. Yikes! Now, throw in the mix that I was having pretty bad GI cramps the entire 20 miles… Not fun. We did get to see an amazing sunrise and we had some really gorgeous scenery along the way.
But by mile 19 I was beat and all I wanted to do was finish…which thankfully we did!
We stopped at a local farmer’s market to “refuel” before heading home.
Ok, so the ginormous cookie really wasn’t mine. I got it for my hubby. (I’m such a sweet wife, right??) I bought a cranberry scone but greedily devoured it before I could snap a picture – woops. I headed home, showered, changed and then headed back out for a 16.5 mile bike ride on the Long Leaf Trace with my hubs. ❤ ❤ ❤
I wasn’t sure how my legs were going to hold up during the bike ride but they did pretty well. I totally feel it today, but ll-in-all, it was really a fantastic Saturday and a terrific training week altogether. Now I’m just excited, nervous, anxious to see exactly what this ‘taper madness’ people talk about is and before I know it the MCM will be here!
Question: Have you ever experienced ‘taper madness’? What did you do to combat it?