Officially Time To Taper

T Minus 13 itty bitty days til LA. Which means my last long(ish) run was Saturday. And man was it beautiful out! Up at 630am and drove up to Seaside http://www.seasidecycle.com to run along the north shore. Feeling a little bit of pressure, bc this is the last real distance run before race day, and I wanted the training to end on a good note.

Left Seaside at about 830 after chatting a little w/ Janda http://www.jandariccimunn.com/JRMhome.html. He gave me the "stern" talking to about keeping it easy, and to stay focused on LA, not trying to whip out a fast 14 miler. The "keep it slow and easy" plan always works better when I'm running with someone, and I'm talking/laughing/distracted. When I'm alone, it goes something like this: "pound, pound, pound, gasp, gasp, gasp, look at the Garmin, oh crap I'm running too fast, I should slow down, reeeeel it in (for about 1-2 minutes), pound pound, pound, gasp, gasp, gasp..."

Off I went on what turned out to be a beautiful run on a beautiful day. First mile I felt slow and tired, but hit my groove at about mile 3-4. Did my best to mimic race day by taking my clif bloks http://www.clifbar.com/food/products_shot_bloks/ every other mile, starting at Mile 3. God those things get nasty when you start hitting those higher miles. Still working for me energey-wise better than Gu however, mostly do to the constant glucose levels (versus the "shot" every 5ish miles). I had a little bit of achilles pain in the phantom injury leg, but nothing that concerned me.

The goal was to pull miles 10-13 within 5-10 seconds of MP, to keep myself honest. That strategy went out the window around mile 9.5, when I looked at the Garmin and realized that I had been w/in 10 seconds of MP the entire run. Oops. Change of plan (winging it) involved picking it up another 5 seconds per mile for 10-13, and then totally chilling the last mile. Needless to say, I still have a LOT to learn about pacing. But lets be real - I was running by store windows those last few miles, and when you catch glimpses of yourself, you ALWAYS want to look fast. No one needed to know that inside my "fast" look, I was breathing like a fat kid.

Finished up with an overall pace of around MP, which was probably faster than it should have been. However, I felt decent, never felt like I was "too" taxed, and it was a flatter course than I've been doing all of my other long runs on.

And with that, it's TAPER TIME!!