How NOT to Survive a Taper Week
Do I write one of these posts before every major race? Probably, but it always seems like a good idea at the time. What else am I supposed to do with ALL THIS ENERGY???
The Chicago Marathon is this Sunday (you may remember from my last post that this is a “big effing deal (exclamation point, all caps, etc.)”) and so this week has been the dreaded taper. It’s the week that proves beyond a doubt that those of us who do this running thing are not normal.
The idea behind tapering is, of course, that you run less the week before a big goal race in order to conserve energy for that race. Let me do a nice comparison table for you:
| Normal Week | Taper Week | |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday | 10-22 | 6 |
| Sunday | 4 | 10 (swapped long run from Saturday) |
| Monday | 6.5 | 4 |
| Tuesday | 4 | 4 |
| Wednesday | 6-9 | 4.5 |
| Thursday | 4 | 4 |
| Friday | 0 | 0 |
| Saturday | 10-22 | 2 |
Okay, so maybe I’m still running more than any “rational, sane” person would, but remember, those types of people aren’t my basis for comparison. I spend all day every day surrounded by runners even nuttier than myself. They go running before AND after work. (And I feel somehow lacking in my once-a-day schedule…usually enough so to add in a swim, bike ride, or other form of energy burnoff.)
Well, this week I’ve been trying hard NOT to burn off any extra energy. For example, instead of going for an easy 10-mile bike ride, I decided to weed the backyard.
These three piles were too much to squeeze in the compost bin.
Was this an energy conservation fail?
I’ve eaten dinner at 4pm in hopes that it would prevent me from eating my nerves in an all-out sugar binge.
When that didn’t work, I drank two glasses of wine.
And when that didn’t work, I bought a giant tub of grapes and ate about 85 in one sitting. (If you can’t beat yourself…outsmart yourself?)
I’m not even kidding.
I’ve almost completed all of Season 1 of The Good Wife, including episodes 13-19 yesterday after work(!!!)…from which I got off at 3pm. I then of course went into a spiral of shame over having wasted the afternoon in such a manner, even though I also: took the garbage out, mostly finished migrating the blog to WordPress, paid bills, did some laundry, and cleared out a week’s worth of email.
I also signed up for a shakeout run with Bart Yasso in Chicago, because my thoughts have been going something like this: *crazy marathon haze, crazy marathon haze* – oooooh, that could make a good blog post – *crazy marathon haze, crazy marathon haze*.
Even at work, where I have things to do, I’ve been spewing pent up energy everywhere. In two 6-hour days, I managed to:
- Design a new instructional flyer and neatly-labeled (I colored bubble letters with a Sharpie. PRO!) bin to advertise our bulk discounts on nutrition.
- Test run and take notes and pics of 4 different shoes (carefully organized in Evernote).
- Windex the entire front of the store – inside and out. (Which is ALL GLASS WINDOWS.)
- Sweep up the latest evidence of the hoards of crickets that for some reason have all decided the store is the perfect place to take their last breath. (Do crickets even breathe? Oh well, point is, if I’m willingly coming within 5 feet of a large insect, something is a bit off.)
I need to run this freaking race already!!!!!!!!!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go use more of this energy to hang more laundry, decide what to do with the dead squirrel the dog just gifted me (she’s actually squeaking with distress because I didn’t thank her and make it into a stew), and mindlessly reformat the 107 remaining posts that lost all their pagination in the Blogger to WordPress migration.
Current “Dead Squirrel Disaster Plan”
Should be a good day…
Running Fiesta 