Tapering

I went out for a short mid-week run - a week and a half until RNR Marathon. This tapering phase gets really hard on me. It sounds weird, I know, and during that last week of a LOT of really hard miles (and one really long 20 miler) I am so looking forward to the taper. But then it gets here and it just sucks. I go from 55 miles a week to 36 to 28 miles this week. I get all grumpy and snappy. I can’t sleep and worry about how much I’m eating (I looked it up online, and each pound adds like 3o seconds to your marathon time... darn that Amish Friendship bread! I really must just throw that starter away, but it seems almost like abandoning a pet. Still, there is just NO NEED to consume that many calories every 10 days!) It’s so strange, I love those long runs. I keep saying that I’ll just do this and that marathon and then stop training and just go back to running.... so now I’m just going to do San Diego, and then Marine Corp Marathon in DC.... then Tallahasse Marathon next Feb (it’s so close to home, how can I pass it up?), then maybe somewhere along the line I’ll qualify for Boston in April 09... then there’s that Nike Women’s Marathon next fall, and maybe the Country Music Marathon in Tennessee...
It’s been a stressful week, and so I was looking forward to my run. I ran 6 miles at pace (ah, well, maybe a little bit faster...it was only 6!) the day before, and hadn’t been out on the trails for a while, so I got up and got Skoshi and set off.
I really do love running on the trails - although they get a bit buggy this time of year. I get lulled into a false sense of no-bug security during the winter and allow myself to watch the trail in front of me and zone off into my deep running reverie, and then FWAP! full frontal spiderweb to my face. And although I generally consider myself somewhat calm and reserved, just the thought that the spider is still lurking somewhere about my face or hair or torso or extremeties is enough to send me shrieking like a girl while trying to wipe off the web and/or spider from my face/hair/torso/extremeties. Of course, then I get so fanatic about looking for spiders that I forget about the roots and wind up tripping and scraping the back of my right shoulder on the ground. Always the back of my right shoulder. Not sure how I do that, but I think there’s some fancy twist/flail involved. Whoever I’m running with always seems impressed (even the dog comes back to check on me).
I had my cell phone with me for this run - I was supposed to do this run slow (it’s a “rest” day - only four miles). One of my favorite spots is this old dead tree - it looks like some sort of creature with arm extended up. It’s also the “one-mile” marker. My other favorite spot is about 2 miles farther down the trail, at the tail end of Rocky Bayou. I’ve got out there on quiet foggy mornings when it was like looking into the end of the world - absolutely blank. Skoshi loves it, too. There’s the bayou, and then there’s a couple of big perpetual mud puddles...