How to Taper For a Race I Haven’t Trained For: And a Strange Dream

Sitting here waiting to catch up on the phone with my Swiss bestie and watching Oscar the foot dog lounge at my feet while keeping an eye on the birds in the back yard…

The boys and I had a great time visiting my parents over the weekend (and HH enjoyed a lovely bacheloresque weekend gorging himself on college football and golf.)  Alex and my dad went fishing and caught 30 fish…

 

I snatched up some Indian art at a local art fair…while my mom and aunt were checking out the serious stuff, I fell in love with the cartoonist Ricardo Cate and picked up this–

 

Can you read it?  It says, “Now wait a minute.  Somebody here, I’m not gonna say who, has no rhythm whatsoever!”

 We had a great time, I squeezed in a productive 5-mile run on Saturday morning, and we got back in time to spend a good part of Sunday with HH.

Oh, and in other news, I had a dream last night that I was an actress and got cast in the new Princess Diana movie with Naomi Watts.  I was cast as Camilla Parker Bowles, and Tom Hanks was Prince Charles, and I had a fabulous screen test but was confused because I didn’t know why they would cast me since I had dark hair.  I am serious.  Interpretations, anyone?

Dream Weaver

I believe you can get me through the night

On to running…my half marathon is this weekend.  Oh, had you forgotten that I was doing that?  So had I!

I have never (not)trained like this.  I think I ran 9 miles at the most for a long run, and that was several weeks back.  Not only have I shorted my long runs, I’ve shorted my short runs!  In short, I’m short.

I have my reasons, like most people do when race time comes and they aren’t prepared.  It happens…it’s just never happened to me because I am typically anal obsessive freakish fixated psychotic dedicated when it comes to training programs.

So I am in a unique situation.  Do I bail, or do I thump my chest, give myself the ol’ I’m not a quitter speech and lace up?

I sort of feel like I need to show up and run as punishment—a “take your lumps” sort of deal.  Yet, the thing is, I will feel plenty mad anyway, even if I’m at home on my couch.  I will hate myself in either place.

Still, I think I might give it a go, with my phone nearby in case I need someone to come sweep me up off the side of the course at Mile 10.

I won’t sub-2:00, which will be like a giant kick in my nuts, were I to have any (what is the female equivalent?  Do share!)

I might not be able to finish.

Even if I do finish, I will crash at some point past the Mile 9 mark, and it will be spectacular.  Nobody turns to the Dark Side like I do during a race.

So how do I taper when I haven’t even trained?  I think I’ll do 4 miles today, a 30-minute tempo run tomorrow (tempo defined loosely as any pace between a fast walk and a sprint since I currently lack any stable tempo) and a 3-mile run on Thursday.  I’ll rest my undertrained muscles on Friday and then take my medicine come Saturday morning.

Happy running!

 

 

 

• Griping
• Half Marathon
• Running
• Tapering