Still a taperin'

Today's run: Recovery run of 4 miles at 9:39 pace

Rotating the clock is harder than it seems. I woke up at 5:30 today, the time the marathon will start, and got my run in before work (on time to my 8am meeting, no less!) Just the same, I have a hard time getting to bed early, and I do need the rest.

This morning, I found the streets in the Mission nice and quiet. Running up Florida Street, there were almost no cars at all. Coming back down Harrison, fairly quiet as well.

As I reached the second mile, I had warmed up but I still felt a bit sluggish. I had been debating between going for 5 miles or going for 4, a small but first decision in settling the how much to taper question. I decided to do just 4 miles, thinking that I want to get enough rest in my legs before the big day. (I have already decided to cut Sunday's run from 12 to 10 miles, so this week will be 29 miles instead of the schedule's 32).

Up and back along Alabama, I took note of the several murals at Alabama and 24th Street, which feature a warrior with head-garb with a fainting woman. Both are depicted as if they'd be part of an action film today. I think they must be depicting the Aztec legend of lovers Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatli.

Towards the end, I thought I had remembered something about strides, but thought they were part of next week's run. Ooops. I should have done the strides today, too. Maybe I'll do them as part of Tuesday's run. On the one hand, I have Mike's advice not to overdo anything, so not doing the strides seems okay. On the other hand, I have Thomas' advisement that what people lose during the Taper mesocycle is speed (and Mike also did say to focus on the right level of intensity).

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I apologize: I've turned on word-verification for comments, meaning you'll need to type in a word that's hard to see, designed to foil bots. I came back to my computer yesterday to find 30 messages prompted by comments that had embedded links to advertising sites.