TAPER TALK

I’ve mentioned that when I get near the end of things I tend to just sort of start looking for my next project. When it comes to marathons that usually means I “screw up” the taper. It’s worse than I remember. I checked my old logs and came up with the following data; Month, Year, 3 weeks out, 2 weeks out, 1 week out (peak mileage):

June 2001, 56, 29, 29 (66)
Oct 2001, 49, 42, 26 (65)
Apr 2002, 52, 44, 13 (84)
Oct 2002, 54, 36, 22 (77)
April 2004, 38, 40, 15 (84)
June 2005, 35, 9, 29 (82)
Oct 2006, 64, ?, ? (82)

It’s pretty obvious that I haven’t followed any taper plan very well. You don’t see a nice 80%, 60%, 40% cut in mileage. And as far as long runs go, I usually hear something like 20, 16, 13 for your last 3 weekends. I can honestly say I haven’t run more than 14 miles within 2 weeks of a marathon – at least until this year.

Saturday I ran 16 miles at Lebanon Hills. My legs actually had a little spring in them, which made me forget about the below average workouts I’ve had recently. I’d classify the pace as moderate – probably close to 7:40s. This run gave me 64 for the week.

Sunday I had 10-11 miles planned with 6-7 at marathon pace. Monday called for a day off. I ended up flip-flopping these workouts. Yesterday I lazed around not doing much – other than hanging out with the girls. While that was great yesterday, it meant I had to get up at 4:40 this morning in order go get in 11 miles. Just for my psyche, I’m going to stop calling these MP workouts. After a 2 mile warm-up, I ran 7 miles at 7:04 pace and finished with a 2 mile cool-down. I’ll take it.

Now that I’ve proven that my photo skills suck, I’ll get back to hyping the professional photos from TCM. Paul (the lead photographer for TCM) was even cool enough to offer some tips on my photo taking abilities (or lack thereof). Apparently he’s not afraid of the competition that I could provide. He also offered up some images for my blog. How cool is that? I think I’ll take him up on the offer of people I interview.

Alright, I better at least address the fact that the Twins got swept in the first round. What gets me is that “everyone” was so excited that winning the division also meant avoiding the Yankees. Given that the A’s were as hot as the Twins during the second half of the year, I think I would have taken my chances with the Yanks. The Tigers did okay against them. Oh well, it was still an incredible season. And it should be an interesting off-season. I’ll bet that they keep Torii Hunter and that Brad Ranke decides to play one more year.

Quote of the day;

“The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. It has camaraderie. It has heroism. Every jogger can’t dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon.” – Fred Lebow