Mardi Gras Marathon Week.

This is the week where all my hard marathon training comes to fruition. The 7 days leading up to the race is all about REST. Rest means no new home projects, heavy lifting (like snow shoveling), staying up late, or any other strenuous activities that causes me to stress my body or mind.

Monday will be either 3 easy miles or no workout. Tuesday calls for 4 x 400 repeats at 5K pace. Wednesday an easy 3 miler and travel day. Thursday and Friday is getting acclimated to the heat wave. Saturday is a 2 mile leg loosener. Sunday is race day.

My nutrition plan for the week will be to cut all sweets including my favorite dark chocolates. To increase my carbs with more fruits, veggies and some pasta stuff. Otherwise, I won't try anything new in my diet including a detox cleansing.

I will try a "news fast" but look for inspirational words and videos about running. I will remember to smile and have a good time from now and while running the race.

Taper Time!

After 15 weeks of consistent marathon training I have made it to the final 3 weeks of taper training. Today's run was a 20 miler and that was followed by a 10 mile marathon pace run on Saturday. The run seemed especially hard today because of the 2 inch snow covered trails. My legs felt and feel like they ran 30 miles. But I'm sure running a hard 10 miler the day before didn't give my legs much recovery time. I think Hal Higdon did it that way for the Advanced II program on purpose to toughen the runners up. The totality of Hal's program gave me the confidence and physical shape I need to run a good marathon. I missed 2 workouts early in the program, shortened a 19 mile to 15 mile run, but ran a 22 miler instead of a 12 miler. The quantity of the runs is out of the way but the quality will continue up to race day. And my focus now is getting to the starting line well rested. Yoga is my choice of recovery to get me prepared mentally and physical for race day. If I can do a little every day I'll be happy.