In which the author starts to taper . . .

So with all last week’s sessions put to bed, it’s semi-officially time to taper. That means running progressively fewer miles over the final three weeks to rest the legs ready for the big day. It’s also traditionally the time when you feel restless or lethargic, hungry or dejected, worried, obsessed, twingy (endowed with twinges), sleepy, or any number of other symptoms which might be psychological and might be nothing to do with tapering at all but more to do with incipient death.

Since I forgot to mention it, the big day itself is at Stratford – the Shakespeare marathon on 25th April, when most people in the country will be running in London. As it’s the weekend when Shakespeare is supposed to have been born, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be learning some sonnets to recite to myself when the going gets tough.

I’ve bought myself yet another bag, groan. But after all, I don’t have a lime green one yet! This is mostly because I hate trying to drink from drink stations, stopping, tripping up over discarded cups or bottles, and need to take some fuel in the form of gels along with me. I can’t seem to run with a belt on, the most obvious solution, but have run marathons with a backpack before (bigger ones) so this lightweight small affair looks like it might just do the job rather well.

This week’s plan:

• Tuesday: 8 x 800m in 2:41 each with 1:30 rest intervals
• Wednesday: 1 hour biking
• Thursday: 5 miles @ 6.26 per mile
• Friday: 1 hour biking
• Saturday: 5 mile easy run
• Sunday: 13 miles @ marathon pace (6:50) on the Stratford route

The plan for Sunday’s run is to make it a race practice, running with the backpack and fuel, at race pace (in fact faster than race pace), on a single loop of the marathon course, including the much hyped Greenway, a straight 5-6 mile stretch of disused railway track.

In other news I took an exam this morning, my first for over ten years, and am now an Adobe Certified Expert in Dreamweaver! In celebration I bought the lime green rucksack pictured above and some caffeinated energy gels. Mmmmmmmmm.