Marathon day is one week from today, and taper madness is setting in hard. I feel “puffy.” I feel eight hundred little niggles that I’m SURE will be an injury (and that go away in a second, because they’re imaginary anyway). I’m obsessively checking the weather (right now, it looks perfect for race day. And I really hope I didn’t just jinx it…). Here’s how the training portion of my taper madness went this week:

Monday: 

5 miles easy, plus core work

Tuesday: 

6 miles of fartleks, then some upper-body and core strength work. Leg work is done until post-marathon.

Wednesday: 

5.1 easy miles, then core. I took a selfie because I was trying to show off my Skirt Sports gear for the giveaway (which you should enter if you haven’t!). I ended up having to take a mirror picture instead, but you can’t have a training recap without awkward selfies, right?

Confession: I tried for an embarrassingly long time to take a cool jumping picture like Christy always has, but I couldn’t time it right. I had more than one that looked like I was about to use the bathroom, and so I gave up.

Thursday: 

3 x 2000m tempo intervals with 400m recoveries. With warm-up and cool-down, a total of 7 miles.

Friday: 

Since I was moving my long run to Sunday, I took Friday off from running. I did 45 minutes of yoga and called it good.

Saturday: 

6.2 easy miles and a quick core workout. I saw a post on Instagram the other day that said, “Never trust a girl who wears pink workout gear.” I thought that was stupid, so I posted this post-run shot as my rebuttal.

Hashtag wearallthepink

Sunday: 

Thunderstorms kept me up most of the night and were still going strong in the morning. I don’t do lightning (living is my favorite), so I took to the treadmill for my last “long” run: 12 miles with the last 6 progressively faster.

I should’ve waited a few hours; it rained all day, but the lightning stopped not long after I finished running. Oh well. At least it was only 12 and not a long-long run.

Total: 41.3 miles.

And now, I enter the hardest (mentally) week of marathon training: race week. Let the antsyness begin!

How do you deal with taper madness? 

What’s your reaction to thunderstorms? I hate them. Hate, hate, hate.

Well, folks, it’s happening: race week is here. Or will be, tomorrow. One week from today, I’ll run my seventh marathon. Gulp. This week was true taper, and for the most part, I actually enjoyed it. It feels good to be able to run after work and not have the run dominate my entire evening. I am feeling like I’ve gained 40 pounds, but that’s par for the taper course. I know it’s all in my head, anyway… and probably has something to do with the many bowls of cereal I downed this week. Probably should stop doing that.

I didn’t do any double workouts this week. My runs were short enough that I could do core work and a little upper body (read: I did some push-ups) after running. I figured extra sleep would do me more good than an extra workout, especially since my students are doing their usual back-to-school germ swap,

Not me, Oprah!

Here’s how the week looked:

Monday:
Rest.

Tuesday: 
5 miles of fartleks. They had to be done on the treadmill in the early morning, as I had to work the gate at a middle school volleyball game in the afternoon. I also did some core work.

Wednesday:
4.5 miles with my friend Jaylin, who first sparked this running addiction of mine. We hadn’t seen each other in ages, so it was great to run and catch up… even it if was 90 degrees.

Thursday:
5.2 miles easy, then some core.I feel like this post needs a picture. Here’s one of a bumblebee. I took it after I ran Thursday, so it totally belongs here.

Friday:
Tempo intervals: 3x2000m with 400m recoveries, 7 miles total. I again ran on the treadmill in the a.m. so I could watch high school volleyball and football in the p.m.

Saturday: 
6 miles easy and a quick core workout

Sunday:
 12-mile fast-finish “long” run. It felt really good. That’s a good sign — taper is doing its job!Sometimes my Garmin does crack and thinks I ran at 5:52 pace.

Total: 39.7 miles

Race week is my absolute least favorite week of marathon training. All the work is done, and it’s just a waiting game now. Gulp.

What’s your favorite strategy to combat race-week nerves?