Taper...Sucky

Well its the "official" week of taper. God created a run obsessed marathon monster in give or take 10 weeks (thats how long I have been training for/running for)...and on the 11th week he rested! I have been having some real issues for the last two weeks both mentally and physically. I have had horrible runs, wake up in the middle of the night with dreams about the race, and have aquired random akes and pains. I garuntee 98.65% of these "issues" are mental, but the rest may or maynot be real "issues". When it comes to individual sports I am a head case. My #1 downfall. If the stars are not alined and I do not execute my OCD, chances are I will think everything has gone wrong and let it mess with me mentally. When it comes to team sports I was always the star (water polo) and could FSU no matter what was going on around me. Funny how that happends. I can be the most competeative person sometimes and the biggest loser sometimes and let everyone beat me down, especially myself. Must overcome this!

Anywho, this week started with a rest day on Monday per usual. Tuesday I decided to hit the final section of the race for the 1 millionth time. I started at No Hands and ran up to Robbie Point. It is about 6 miles round trip. I felt pretty good starting off and held a decent pace. That is until I started climbing. Calfs started to cramp up again which has been the usual for the last two weeks. I felt horrible! I did some sprints up Robbie Point and just wanted to get it over with. Felt real good on the way down. The brushed the trail and have left a wide section, but a extremely slippery dirt section on a pretty steap area. I can see a lot of people falling on this section due to tired legs, during the winter I cant wait to sled this mud section! Anywho did pretty good on the way down, do cramping, and was able to have a solid run on the flat. I saw some gals running ahead of me, I might have been hallucinating, but they all had targets on their backs...funny how that happends! Anyways, I felt pretty good and turned on the jets. They were significantly in front of me when I saw them, but I treated it like the race. If I can see anyone in front of me on race day there is no way I am going to let them beat me! I sprinted past them and felt damn good. I ran all across No Hands and finally felt like I had a semi good run. I planned to really rest my legs the rest of the week. I cannot let me calves feel like this on race day or its going to be a long day.

Tuesday night I wore compression sleaves to bed that I barrowed from a fellow FTR and went to bed with a bad cramp in my right calf. Woke up in the morning and it was gone. Unfortunalty I had to work all day Wednesday and was running around like a chicken with my head cut off at work! I wore compression socks and an icy hot patch on my left calf since that is the one that seems to be cramping the most. Cant tell if it really helped, but every effort should be made right now. No exercise Wednesday, but at the end of the day I was exhausted! I came home, skipped dinner and passed out.

This morning (Thursday) I got up early and swam laps. That was suppose to be my xtraining during training for the race, but that ended pretty quick. In my peak training I was running so much every day I did not run I was exhausted. I really need to focus on saving the legs the next few days so I did mostly pulling. I ended up swimming/pulling 2000 yards. It felt so good to drag my legs and get some air in my lungs. I did 4 x 25 yards of underwater where you hold your breath the entire 25 yards. It always makes me feel good. You go hypoxic about halfway though the lap, see starts, but you lungs feel awesome! I walked away from the workout really confident. I will do that again tomorrow just to get the blood flowing. Lung capacity can get you a long way in life. I hope it helps Saturday. Today I have just odds and ends to prepair for. Washing my hydration pack and hat. Tomorrow I will collect nutrition and pack the hydration pack. I will try to stay off my feet as much as possible today. Should be pretty easy. Tonight I am going out to dinner with some FTRs. That will hopefully get some nerves grounded through talking it through with people.

Tomorrow my mom comes and I do packet pick up. More tomorrow as I slide out of my comfort zone for real!