18...21.... Taper

God I really am so poor at keeping this blog up to date. I just can't seem to find the time. Sarah manages to update hers and she doesn't even have a PC at home, so maybe I'm just lazy.

Anyway, the 18 miler seems so long ago now, there hardly seems much point in reporting on it, Sarah has done a very good job of it here so there's no need for me to say much more. The only point I will make is that I found it easy going until about mile 15 when the hills for the third time on Military Road and the Upper Glen Road started to take their toll, but we finished it and only a little slower than planned so that's all that's important.

And so to our 21 mile run last weekend.

I woke up earlier than usual the Monday before our 21 mile run with an abscess on my tooth, it was very painful and making me feel quite ill. So needless to say our weekly runs were a little disrupted as I really wasn't up to it, I was on antibiotics and my body was obviously trying hard to fight the infection, it left me feeling very tired and generally unwell, so I thought resting up for a couple of days was the wise thing to do. By the Wednesday I was feeling a little better so we got out running again, Thursday and Friday were the same, but I still wasn't feeling 100%.

Our long run was planned for Saturday morning, and because we planned to run the last 21 miles of the marathon course we wanted to start early as to avoid as much traffic and pedestrians as possible. So I awoke at 5.30am, not feeling too great at all, and made us both breakfast, the plan was to have breakfast, go back to sleep until 7.am and start running around about 8am. Obviously my body had different ideas though, and I slept through my alarm, only waking at 11 am. Instantly I was already annoyed with myself and felt literally drained. We were ill prepared having not made any Lucozade sport drink the night before, not having bought any gel packs and not really having put much thought into how we would carry our essential items for the run. For the marathon we hope to have a number of family and friends on the course to supply us with drinks, food, gel packs etc that we might need for the run, but obviously none of these would be there for our 21 mile training run, so we had to work out a way to carry as much as we could for the run.
I had an old bum bag that I decided we could use. So off we set to the entrance of the park at the top of the North Circular Road to take on the last 21 miles of the course. Also my usual shorts that I wear running had gotten soaked on our run on Thursday and I put them in the wash on Friday, they weren't dry though so I had to wear a pair of old football shorts, to say they were uncomfortable was an understatement.

It wasn't to go too well.

By mile two I just could not continue, the bum bag was really annoying me and was far too heavy for a 21 mile run. I was just wasn't feeling well at all. Mentally I wasn't able for it. The final straw came when I actually got sick and that was it. I just wasn't going to continue. We trudged back to the car feeling very dejected. I felt terrible, both from being sick and from having to cancel the run. All I could do was go home rest and hope it would be better tomorrow. On the way we pick up supplies, gel belt, gels, new shorts and off we went for a day of full rest.
So would Sunday be better.
You bet.
We got up early(ish) and had breakfast, hung around for it to settle and headed off for our final long run. I was feeling much better than the day before and feeling a lot more prepared with energy gel, belt and new shorts.
I don't really know what to say about the run except it went like a dream. I really had no problems at all. I felt strong for the whole run, stopping to stretch or rehydrate occasionally certainly helped but I'm not sure if I even needed to. I loved every step of it, and as soon as we were out of the park and into new territory my mind was sufficiently occupied with new sights and sounds that I really didn't notice the miles go by. I also spent a lot of my time imagining what it will be like to run the course on the 30th, with the crowds, other runners and no traffic and it really kept me motivated.
One point I want to correct from Sarah's blog was that I wasn't actually trying to trick her into running 22 miles rather than 21. It was just that I wanted to start at the 4 mile mark as it was just at the gates into the Park and was an easier point to start from then driving for a mile into the park and looking for the exact 5 mile mark. If I'm honest I was going to see how we felt at mile 21 and maybe take in the extra mile around Trinity College if we were both feeling well enough and I knew if I told Sarah that she would have stopped dead in her tracks at mile 21 and not give me the option to do that. As it turned out I decided not to run it, not because we weren't feeling strong but because we were but I didn't really see the benefits of us struggling with the traffic and all the Sunday shoppers just to do one more mile, and I also thought it would be a nice boost for Sarah that we finished earlier than she though.
I also didn't want Sarah to know where the 20 mile mark is. Sarah suffers from a lot of mental blocks when she's running, we've run every step of our training together and as far as I'm concerned she's as capable as me of running any distance. Her problem is though, that she remembers all the negative stuff and dwells on it. I knew she had read a lot of stuff on hitting the wall and what happens at 20 miles and I knew if she knew she was on 20 miles her mind would have started to play tricks on her, so I lied. I proved to her that it was all in her mind. I'm not saying there's no such thing as hitting the wall. I've read up enough on it to know there is, but I also knew we had taken enough gel, and drinks on board to be able to get through it and as it turns out she was actually running her strongest at mile 20, even though she actually thought it was mile 19. So if a little lie helped I'm not sorry at all.
So to the taper, I have to say I've been reading a lot of other peoples blogs and they are talking about how they are going nuts with the decreased running and all the symptoms of taper, but to be honest it hasn't effected me like that at all. Certainly for someone like Thomas I can see how the reduced miles would be a huge change, when he's doing 15 and 18 and even 21 mile training runs on a regular basis, but to be honest for me it hasn't really changed, our mid week runs are still around the same mileage as they were fairly short 4 - 6 mile runs and the only real difference I noticed was at the weekend when we only had to run 11 miles instead of the 21 we ran previously.
For me though the one thing I'm really trying to control is the fear, the fear that we haven't done enough, I want to get out more often and run longer now than ever before. I'm just really frightened that I peaked at the 21 mile training run and I'm afraid it will all go wrong on the big day. I'm quite literally terrified that my body isn't actually ready and the desire to squeeze in long runs is becoming increasingly more difficult to suppress.
All I can say is, that because this is my first marathon, I have no idea if I've done enough. I can only hope I have, but I do know that I can't do anything about it now one way or the other. I'm not out to break any records or even have a real time goal (secretly I'd like to finish before 4.30 but won't be too disappointed if we don't) so I think I have enough mental strength to drag my sorry ass around the course from whatever point my body decides to give up at.
Here's hoping.
Now taper.... Please hurry up and finish, I want to RUN A MARATHON.