Beginning of the Taper

It's that time of the training season. It's time to taper. Over the next two weeks mileage will significantly decrease. I've been told this will drive me into a time of craziness and irritability. It should be fun.

Saturday morning we took off for 12 miles. Just 12 miles. I must say, coming off 20 miles, 12 just seemed boring. It was a beautiful morning though. For the first time the birds were chirping and the sun was shining when I woke up. For some reason I sprung out of bed excited to run. On the way in though, I couldn't help thinking. This is just 12 miles. Do I really need to run this early in the morning? Yes, I do. Becuase I love training and I love running with my teammates.

You could tell Team BMC was quite relaxed this morning. Everyone was talking about how they really could have just rather stayed in bed this morning. Kevin even admitted to "going out for one drink" on Friday night and having that "one drink" turn into a few more than that. Around mile 5 he said, "I think I just smell like booze!" So I kidded with him telling him that that's all I could smell. Honestly, there was no smell, but he's such a good guy to joke with that I couldn't resist!

Sarah, Stephanie and I stayed pretty spread out with Stephanie setting the pace for us. She seemed to have the extra kick in her step that Sarah and I needed to follow. We were definitely quieter than our 20 mile run, but I think we were all still half asleep.

This run just felt really weird. I can't really describe it. It seemed almost unncessary, but long, but boring, but awakening. I know this doesn't make any sense. I can't imagine how I'll explain next week's 8 mile "long run." Some people said that won't be going to Fitcorp for it, but I really like waking up on Saturday's and going in to meet the team. Honestly, I'm really going to miss it and it makes me sad to know we just have two runs left together: 8 miles on Saturday and 26.2 miles on Marathon Monday.

Just 15 days to go... (and Sarah informed me that accuweather.com has a 15 day forecast so at least I'll have something to keep me busy during the taper.)