taper taper taper

T minus 2 days until my first half marathon in almost a year (ahem, I don't count that triathlon in southern Louisiana). While I did have a training plan, I didn't follow it very well, especially in the last 6 weeks or so, which was most of it. I get bored just running all the time; it's the reason I started triathlons to begin with. So of course I added in swimming and spinning and took away some of the running. When I don't run every day I look forward to it. When I do, it's not that exciting to me. Maybe you can only run so many miles on the sidewalk of Mud Island park, that same sidewalk next to which you've driven multiple repeats of each day for the last 3+ years, before it gets old. But anyway.

Sunday's race is the Mercedes Half Marathon in Birmingham. The biggest issue we are now facing with this race is the SNOWSTORM that came through the area south of Tennessee last night. So just making it TO Birmingham with all the road closures may be an issue. But once we're there, the race is on.

Here's the elevation chart, and Damie says just know where the hills are; they aren't that bad. So I've been tapering a little bit this week. No long run, no track (actually it was just too cold and icy for me), no weight lifting (I've been slacking on that anyway), lots of sleep (like this morning when I slept in accidentally instead of swimming). But I'm not expecting a great result anyway. I'd always rather be surprised at how fast I am instead of disappointed that I didn't make my ambitious goal. I almost never make super ambitious goals for myself for that very reason. You can call it pessimistic, I think it's just realistic with a hope of a pleasant surprise. :) So my goal for this race is to preserve last year's PW from the Little Rock Half. It wasn't a lifetime worst, only last-seven-years worst. I hope to not exceed that time if at all possible. Please don't look up my time, it's embarrassing. :) Of course, if it's all starting to look bad around mile 6 or 7, my Valentine's Day present to J may be a victory over me.