The Taper Madness Protocol

Hail my running brothers and sisters!  As I sit here and massage my calves, I personally blame Psyche for my current state of being.  If you’re reading this blog, you know that in 2 weeks I’m running the Country Music Marathon here in my hometown of Nashville (Yeehaw!).  As I have 2 weeks left, I am in the throes of taper madness!  Since I’ve started racing, I have been aware of the anxiety that I haven’t trained enough, the anticipation of busting out an awesome new PR, the fear of falling short of goal, and the exultation of visualizing racing among throngs of cheering crowds that comes with those last couple of weeks prior to your big race.  For the uninitiated, we call those last few weeks of reduced workouts to save your legs for the big race tapering.  The wild mood swings of dread and excitement, we would call the “jitters” down here.  However, Psyche gave my jitters a name that I had not heard before, Taper Madness.  And in naming, she gave those feelings bubbling through my head power.  Power over me.  Power that I cannot escape.  Power that forces me to acknowledge it at every waking moment.  Power, that if left unhindered, would surely TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

At these times of vulnerability and weakness, I do what any obsessed runner does, I hit books!  Or in this case, the internet.  I review my online training log and feverishly copy down my past training times before my last races, so that I can statistically analyze the correlation of my training paces to game day performances.  I scour other running blogs and websites to gleam the secrets of speed and nuggets of knowledge to raise my endurance.  I ponder my diet and curse the 10-second-costing pound I gained from that harmless looking slider at lunch (hmmm…sliders…*slobber*).  I seek out new gadgets, gear, tools, and accessories on every Chinese website that delivers overnight for the Holy Grail of racing that I can ingest, strap on, or doff that will create a magic bubble around me reducing wind resistance and pushing competitors unceremoniously out of my way.  Then I pester anyone with any running experience with reviews of my training to draw out cheap praise for my hard work and assurances that I will, indeed, catch that damn BQ tiger by the tail this time and make him my beyotch.  I bribe my children to pray to the Good Lord to bless me with speed as I’m not allowed to do so (I’m pretty sure that I sold my soul when I signed my admission papers to law school.  If not, I’m sure I traded most of it for my last PR.).  I even invoke the name of Chuck Norris to amuse and distract myself as I blog mindlessly about how I love to race.  What would make an otherwise rational (don’t listen to my wife…if she truly thought I was crazy, she wouldn’t have procreated with me) man adult mature person to act in such a way?  Taper Madness.  CURSES!!!

Now for the hard numbers:  The track was closed so that the track team could get their practice in.  Inconsiderate bastiches.  Can’t they see that I am a man in need?  Anyway, I went to the park and my main workout was 10x.5 mi intervals with .25 mi recovery runs.  They broke down:  03:25.5, 03:26.8, 03:35.4, 03:46.2, 03:32.1, 03:28.6, 03:33.8, 03:27.2, 03:23.7, and 03:30.3.  This was an average pace of 3:31.0/mi.  This was 12 seconds better than I did last week.  A definite improvement, but still not quite where I was hoping to be.  I definitely felt stronger/better today, but I was reasonably rested and the heat was not nearly as bad as last week. Okay time for me to organize my training log by training type.  :P Later kids!