I'm Officially Tapering

On Sunday I ran my last 20 miler before the Napa Valley Marathon on March 5, and I’ve finally started my taper. As I mentioned before, I like the taper. I slowly feel stronger and stronger as the taper progresses. My only problem will be to make sure I don’t overeat while I'm running less. The week before the marathon, I’ll be at a Navy school in San Diego. It will hard not to chow down at restaurants and at my mom’s house while I’m back in my hometown. I think my best bet will be to buy fruit and healthy snacks so that I can eat a decent breakfast in my room, find a way to eat a good lunch (depending on what’s near the school), and only go out for dinner.

Having discipline around food is not my strong suit. I need to think about all the effort I made to prepare for the marathon and ensure that I make other lifestyle choices to give me the best chance to succeed on race day. Of course that’s easy to say now when I’m not sitting only a few feet away from the chance to get a serving of rocky road ice cream or when I’m not looking at a menu containing a number of delicious fried food selections.

I found out recently that I have to go to the marathon expo to pick up my race number and goody bag. The website said numbers could be picked up before the race and the goody bag could be picked up at the finish line. However, it appears that information is left over from previous years. The only real negative is a waste of gas driving up there twice (it's about an hour drive one way). The good news is that I'll get to drive the course and get familiar with where I'll be trying to go at an ungodly hour on race day.

Monday is my weekly off day. Tuesday I ran seven miles at a general aerobic pace, with eight, 100 meter strides included. Tonight I’ll be running a 12-mile medium long run.