Gone Private Here for a Bit & Tapering

Sorry about that. I have my reasons to keep things on the DL for a little bit.

Anyway, I am officially tapering for North Face 50-miler. I am scared shitless about it, never having run more than 27 miles at once. I really hope I can finish it under the 12-hour cutoff, but one never knows, right? It is good for me to be humble.

I did as much preparation for this as I could considering that just 6 weeks ago I did a double IM over 4 days. The week after that I did zero running, so effectively I have had 5 weeks (I'm only doing a 2-week taper whereas most would do 3 weeks but I figured I needed the extra week of mileage) to get in as much running as possible.

Including yesterday's 3.5 mile run, I got in 210 miles of running in 5 weeks. This week I will only put in about 25-28, and then it's game on. I won't know the weather until the day before effectively, but at least all I have to pack for is one sport!

I had a few people who said they would pace me, but that has fallen through. I still wish I had someone to run the last 15-20 miles with me, but then again, I am pretty used to being alone with myself inside my head and this is going to be something completely different!

Even though I'm tapering the run this week, I am not tapering on swimming or biking until next week. I won't really feel like I'm tapering until Saturday when I only have to run maybe 6 miles instead of, oh, 17-20! I am trying to get lots and lots of sleep and will be clamping down on my nutrition in a few days.

A nice side effect of all this running is that I have been enjoying running outdoors in the cooler weather. For the last 5 years or so, as soon as my triathlon season was over in August or early September, I would immediately switch to the treadmill. Now, I am not looking forward to it so much, and will try and run outdoors this winter as long as I feel the footing is safe. The last 2 winters here we've had so much snow and ice that I just haven't felt safe running outdoors much at all, and even if the roads are clear, that's not great either because cars are trying to run you off. But we shall see. I really should buy a treadmill for home, and I may start scouting out used ones. That would mean only driving to the Y to swim three times a week.

I should stop thinking so much about the future right now and just focus on what I need to get done next week. This is a huge step for me, and if I'm able to complete the damn thing, will go a long way towards my confidence for Ultraman.