Time to Taper

One week to go until my first 100km - Elk Beaver near Victoria on Vancouver Island, so finally it's time to taper. Like for most runners, I have a bit of a love/ hate relationship with tapering. On one way it feels good to take it easier, not having to squeeze in runs around everything else going on in life and actually having time to do other things - catching up with friends, watching movies and just catching up on life in general. To be fair I am usually a little obsessive about my training so will cut out a tonne ofther things in life before I cut back on my running so It's nice to have time to breathe and chill a little. But on the otherhand it seems illogical having spent so much time training to now just cut back - little niggling worries start getting into my head that I am taking it too easy and that race day is yet to come so I should still be training! After spending months running and hitting the gym I start to feel uneasy by cutting things back. But at the end of the day I know I could definitely over do it this week but it would probably be hard to under do training this week - so less is better and will hopefully bring me to the start line refreshed and with a spring in my step! Of course I'm resisting filling my time when I would normally be running with other activities - I've thought of going for a swim or a bike ride but that would probably re-awaken muscles that have not be used in a long time and do more harm than good! I got a good cruisey downhill ski in yesterday and will run later today and also do yoga - but those are things I do all the time. I'm also trying to catch up on sleep (something I usually don't get enough of!), eating good and looking forward to some shorter, easy pace runs this week. I'll be heading to Vancouver on Thursday and so looking foward to catching up with friends and running with my Pacific Road Runners family that evening for the first time since September - yay! Lots of club runners will be racing at Vancouver marathon on the day after I race Elk Beaver so I'm confident they won't push the pace to much on Thursday and that they will be holding back on the beers too! Now time to rest....