Hi! Do you like the alliteration in my title there? I’m clearly on my way to being the next great American writer. Or not.

Anyway, I feel like the only posts I’ve done lately are Target Practice posts. (I stole Target Practice, my weekly goal-setting posts, from Fit. Fun. Femme.) At least I’m being consistent with something blog-wise. This was another busy work-week, as it was Homecoming week (file that under “Things That Were More Fun As a Kid), but I guess that’s kind of a blessing: It kept Taper Madness at bay.

Let’s check in on last week’s goals, shall we?

Life: Have a better attitude. Um. About that. There was some major grumpiness  happening. The extra activities this week were not exactly well-organized, and I was not exactly nice about it. I give myself an F.

Health: Get some good, solid rest this week. I did a decent job most nights of getting to bed fairly early. And I slept in this morning. (I’m 95 years old and waking up at 6:30 a.m. = “sleeping in”). A few nights were later than necessary, though. Grade: B.

Fitness: Run the easy miles easy, get my two days of strength work back in there, and do my usual 4-5 days of core work.  Here’s how the workout week went:

Monday: Rest
Tuesday: AM: 40 minutes strength; PM: 5.1 miles of fartleks
Wednesday: 5 miles easy
Thursday: Tempo intervals — 3 x 1200m w/ 400m rest; 7 miles total; core work
Friday: 4.6 miles easy; 20 minutes body-weight strength work plus core work
Saturday: Spent the morning freezing at our home cross-country meet (I was the bib-tag remover. Though there were some near misses, no one barfed on me. I call that a win.) Then the sun came out, so I went home and ran 6 miles easy, then did 8-minute abs:

(If you’re one of the five people in the world who have yet to do this ab workout, go do it. It’s a decent workout, but I really love it because it’s so entertaining. That man with his capri pants and habit of calling everyone “gang” cracks me up.)

Sunday: 12-mile fast-finish long run. And that’s the last time I’ll run double-digits until the race!

Grade: A

And now for this week’s targets:

Life: Enjoy the less-stressful week. And don’t be a grump. And don’t check Sunday’s forecast 47,000 times. It looks good right now:

Health: The word of the week is “rest.” I want to be in my bed by 9:15 every night, and I want to wake up at the latest possible moment.

Fitness: Remind myself that the work is done, and pushing hard this week will hinder more than help. I’ve got one hard-ish workout on the schedule; the rest are easy. So my goal is to run them easy, as well as use some of the extra time to stretch and foam roll.

I hope you all have a good week! Also, blog-friends, I just want you to know that although I haven’t been commenting much, I have been reading your blogs. It’s just usually on my phone while I’m making copies or heating up my lunch. Or brushing my teeth. Someday, I will have a life again.

What do you do to keep taper madness away?

Ever puked or been puked on at a race?

How do you keep from being a grouch when things get stressful?