With the Boston Marathon less than three weeks away, I have officially started tapering. I should be in peak condition right now, so the taper, ideally will help me maintain fitness while giving me the rest I need before the big race.
Unfortunately, I'm not actually in peak condition, not even close. A week and a half ago, I came down with the flu, and I'm only just now starting to feel better. In addition, I've deviated from my training schedule over the past several weeks due to travel and other plans. Ideally I would have done two 22-mile long runs and a 19-mile run over those three weeks. Instead I paced Dave at the Graveyard 100, skipped a long run due to illness, then limped through an 18-miler this past Sunday. Last week I didn't run at all.
This week, while just starting to feel a bit better as I recover from the flu, I've struggled even maintaining an 8:30 "easy" pace for 6 miles. The real indicator as to whether I'm finally snapping out of this illness-induced funk will be on Thursday, when I have what should be a fairly easy tempo run, 4 X 9-minutes with 2-minute breaks. If I can handle that, then that probably means I'm getting over this illness. I'll have one more long-ish run on Sunday (17 miles with 60 minutes at Marathon Pace), then the tapering will begin in earnest.
Since the disappointment at Richmond, my goal for Boston has been to PR and re-qualify. I had been thinking of starting out at a 7:30 pace, which would put me on track for a 3:16 marathon. But right now, 7:30 seems pretty fast. Hopefully it won't seem quite so fast three weeks from now!
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