Time To Taper

It's taper time!

Last week was my final 40 mile week of the marathon training calendar. Now the weekly mileage totals will decrease until the marathon itself.

The training plan that I have been following shows the next two weeks' mileage as 28 miles and 19 miles. I find that much of a decrease a bit too drastic. My normal training base was 20-25 miles a week before I started marathon training, so going below this level may not be the best thing. Plus, before last year's marathon the taper left me feeling sluggish - plus I put on a few pounds during the taper.

My plan is to have a 30-32 mile week this week and a 25 mile week next week. I also am going to start counting calories so I don't add extra weight this time around. The calorie counting will give me something else to obsess about rather than "why am I not running???"
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This morning's 5 miler was almost scratched. My older son had some bad dreams and came into our room a little after 3am and 4am (no more Halloween-type shows for the next few weeks!). I didn't think I would wake up in time to get out the door by 6am given how I felt when I brought my son back to his room. But my younger son woke up around 5:40am and woke us up as well, so I got my running clothes on and headed out the door.

Another cool, dark morning. I laid out a long sleeve shirt and shorts - which was perfect. I had a bit of uncertainty as I started given how my last run went. To add some fuel to that fire, the HRM part of my Garmin has been giving me really high readings during the first mile of my runs...this started happening last week. Luckily, after the first mile or so, the heart rate readings go back down to normal. I'm going to see about changing the battery in the chest strap and see if that will help.

This morning's stats - 5.5 miles in a 10:01/mile pace with a 149 average HR (with the first mile overstated, so my average HR was really a bit lower).