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October 1, 2007
T Minus Six Days
Well, the Chicago Marathon is in six days. Oh I am so nervous!! I really do feel prepared, but I think I am hitting the point in the taper where every time I run I feel a new ache or pain and become convinced that I will DNF because of some horrible injury that I was not aware of until now. I was at a meeting with our coach yesterday wherein he described this exact syndrome, but I am still freaking out. However, I am also very excited. It has been a long year of training for me, that including picking up a new sport, completing three races in said new sport, and still trying to run enough to complete a half marathon and marathon. Holy cats! When you put it all together it sounds a bit crazy to my non-running or tri-ing friends. And I am definitely ready for a break. I feel like I have hovered on the edge of injury and sickness for several months now, and as long as I can keep on the healthy side through Sunday I will take some much needed rest and probably take a few weeks off from running.
This weekend was a nice one for running although I dealt with some serious wind on my Saturday run. We were up in the mountains for a sweet free weekend at a B&B, so I did some high altitude running. I was actually following a lot of the course for the Estes Park Marathon, and boy I will tell you what, I would not like to run a marathon at 7500 feet of elevation! Especially in a driving wind. It is funny because on our hike Saturday morning Matt and I were talking about how I am obsessed with running. I do not know if the other bloggers in our group feel this way, but if I don’t run first thing in the morning I think about running all day until I run. And I love running in almost all conditions except extreme heat and extreme wind. So of course we were chatting about this and when I left for my run there was a howling wind! It was not too bad except when I was running westbound, so it turned into a fine 10 mile run. Yesterday I ran 8 as kind of a commuting run from near downtown Boulder to my coach’s house for our pre-race meeting. It was nice, I love running in Boulder. I then caught a ride to the park and ride and took the bus home. This took an eternity but I felt good about not driving home, then driving back to Boulder, and then back again. It probably saved me about $6.00 in gas and saved a lot of guilt in my brain about destroying the environment for my own convenience or whatever.
This week will be very light from a training perspective so my primary goal is to not go insane or overdo cross training or anything. I’ll probably bike easy twice and lift once, just since my body is used to doing some cross training. We leave for Chicago on Saturday morning which is very exciting!
Posted by barb at October 1, 2007 9:01 AM
Comments
GOOD LUCK BARB!! You are going to do awesome - you have trained so hard and pushed beyond yourself all summer! Best of luck and have a blast in Chicago. I will be thinking of you. Can't wait to hear all about it! :)
Posted by: Beth at October 1, 2007 7:12 PM