This week I’ve done…nothing! (Well almost nothing – I went for a short, easy lakefront run last night).
I came out of the Green Bay Half Marathon feeling no worse for wear. However, I was run down going in to the race and still feel a bit off my game now.
Looking back on it, I made a mistake in my pre-race training run last Wednesday. My intention was to determine a target pace for the half, by running mile repeats at a slightly faster pace with a 1 minute of rest in between. The run went great – 8 repeats, a total of 9.25 miles (with warm up and cool down) in 80 minutes. And I felt great! But later that day I was wiped out, and by Thursday I came to the realization that I had pushed too hard. The moral of the story is:
I have not figured out how to properly taper for a half marathon.
So this week my body has been telling me to take it easy, and I’ve listened with a week of rest.
Tomorrow I’m running the Soldier Field 10 Mile here in Chicago for the first time. While this is a pretty popular race here, it’s not nearly a big deal as the Green Bay Marathon was last weekend. And it’s as close to a “home game” as I can get: the starting line is literally a 5-minute walk from our condo, and the course is along the lake-shore path where I do most of my training. So I’ll be well rested and ready for a logistically easy race.
Race report to follow!