Sleepy Time Runs

I'm incredibly tired and feel like I should be tapering, oh, a month before my race. Alas, I can't do that. Some of you lovely people have expressed a little concern at the thought of my 18 miler next weekend. No need to worry folks, this is under the advice of Coach Brendan from CES. Myself and the other Lakefront Angels who are running the MCM on October 25th approached him regarding our scheduling dilemma.

You should know that the program we're following was developed by CES to specifically prepare runners for the Chicago Marathon, which is two weeks before the MCM. Therefore, we have two weeks with nothing to do. I'm all for tapering, but four weeks is a tad excessive. Brendan advised us to cutback this week to 12 like everyone else, and then do another 18 miler next weekend, then 12 or 10 the week after that, then 7, and then it's marathon weekend. We can use the weeks leading up to the 12 and 18 milers as filler, twice, and then use the taper weeks. Trust me, all is well in the land of running.

So far this week, my workouts have been pretty good. I'm still working hard to get my two-a-days in, but have had to forgo those on Tuesdays, due to my evening class. I'm not worried though, because it feels like I'm easing myself into the taper. At this point, I am now doing double workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and single workouts on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Sundays are off, of course. Two more weeks of two-a-days and then I'll do one workout per day during the taper. I had a 5K race pace run last night, which went fairly well. I think I sped up too much in the middle, but I was able to push pretty hard for the last mile, which is progress for me.

I had to alter my course in the interests of not having to stop to cross the street. Here is my 5K route:


Usually, if I'm going to run for 30 minutes or less, I run this route:


However, when I run in the evenings, the traffic is pretty heavy on Modaff Road. That unfortunately means I have to stop about a half mile into my run and wait to cross the street. This is not conducive to a 5K run. Thus, I go with the first map above.

The end.