Tapering

The days of being out the door by 6AM to run are over, which means I don't have to convince myself that running is better than laying in bed. I also no longer have to convince myself that "it won't be as bad once I get moving", as I did many times this winter.

The only thing I have to worry about doing is not getting injured. So, in theory, life should be great.

But, it isn't. I'm just as tired, and my legs hurt just as much, as when I was running 15 more miles a week. I hate tapering. I realize that I'm not alone, it's just that I intellectually object to hating it because it doesn't make sense to me.

Delving into that a bit more, I don't think that it's the not running part of tapering that really bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I love running, but I still am. In the not-so-distant past, like this fall, 47 miles was a good week of training.

What I hate about tapering is the waiting. For months, I have been actively training for an event. Now, I am simply training not to get hurt, which isn't really training. I think my favorite time of the marathon is when the gun goes off. Not only for the obvious reason, as Haile Gebrselassie so eloquently put it, "it then gets harder and harder", but because the waiting is over.

So, until Boston, I will drown my sorrows in peeps donuts and call it carbo-loading... it's great to be an adult.