Sunday, October 23, 2011

Taper Anxiety

It's less than a week before the Marine Corps Marathon and I can't wait! However, tapering sucks and it sucks even more when you're slightly injured. Marathon wisdom tells us that during one's taper period, nothing one does will make one perform better during the marathon. But, 3 weeks or so is plenty of time to screw things up.

Basically, I'm in the same situation as I was last year. I injured myself on the same weekend on the same trail, go figure. Same situation, different part of the body. Last year I managed to run a half marathon as a "warm-up" and still managed a second 20 mile run. However this year, I didn't feel comfortable running a half marathon and only managed an 18 miler after the injury.

I'm sure everyone goes through taper withdrawals, unless you're just doing a marathon to cross off a bucket list item then I'm sure you're happy to cut back on the running. You're not supposed to run as much but, you probably have to cut back on your food intake so you don't gain weight.

I've been trying to take it easy as I should be and it's killing me. I'm afraid to run more than a couple miles a few times a week aside from running 7 miles last Saturday and 8 miles yesterday. The long run yesterday was simply a test run to see how my knee held up. What's worse is, I haven't seen anyone about my knee and I don't feel comfortable riding my bike on the trainer out of fear of screwing things up. Also, I'm not in the mood to swim that often. I don't really care what my time for the marathon is, just that I finish. It would be extremely frustrating to put in 5 months of training and have a DNS or DNF even though I won't be the first or last person to do so. I have never had a DNS or DNF and would like to keep it that way. As stubborn as I am about racing my knee would probably have to give out before I stopped. Considering I have my sites set on bigger and better things (a half iron in May), in my opinion, I may reconsider my position on a DNF in the event it would screw up my plan for triathlons.

On Sunday I'll be trying out the Garmin GTU which is a tracking device. I'm going carry it with me during the marathon so the g/f can see where I am on her phone and pick a spot to watch me run by. There has been a lot on Garmin's blog lately about this device. How do you GTU?

There will probably be more to come about this device later.

On another note…Has anyone seen the Fisher Price commercial with the tough digital camera for kids? Does anyone else see the stereotypical humor with using an Asian family for a camera commercial?

2 comments:

  1. Haven't heard from you in a while. Hope everything is okay. I stopped by to get an update on the Marine Corps Marathon. Hope your knee held out and you were able to do it.

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  2. Thanks, everything is going fine. I've just been lazy with posting since I've been moving and I still haven't been able to get pictures for the MCM.

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