Taper

The training program peaked with 23 miles a couple of weeks ago and now I am tapering, meaning the miles come way down and I run much less frequently. I mentioned this before, but I think I am overtrained. I read the signs again in my marathon book, and am experiencing a couple of them. I am having difficulty sleeping and it has become hard for me to get motivated to run. Hal Higdon says one sign of overtraining is fear of training, and on a few occasions I have experienced a strange anxiety when beginning a run.

This is my first marathon in almost five years, and I picked the Higdon Intermediate II program, which is about 650 miles. I believe I should have selected Intermediate I or Novice II. For the taper, I am adjusting and will run very little, if at all, in this last week before the race. I talked to a friend who overtrained for the Omaha marathon and had the same symptoms coming up on the race. He simply stopped running the week before. Counter to what one might think he ran his personal best.

I think I overestimated where I was in terms of capacity coming back into running. I was coming off an injury that took almost a year to rehab, in addition to a great deal of life change (new job, moving to Omaha). It has been great to get back into the sport, but in this case I have learned (and relearned) some great lessons that apply both to running and to life when it comes to setting life-goals.

• Swing for the fence at every at-bat. Always believe you can hit it out of the park.
• Be comfortable with, and even thankful for, the strike-outs. You learn something each time you miss. Harvest these lessons.
• Challenge yourself, but at the same time be realistic.
• Run your own race. The “coach” is not always right.
• Seek out the wise council of people who know you and love you when things start to get off track.
• Listen to your mind, body, and spirit.

In spite of the challenges, I am still excited about running the marathon next week. I will show up and do my best, and in finishing know the satisfaction of setting a difficult goal and working to accomplish it, even if along the way I made some mistakes and everything did not go as planned down the stretch. I normally learn much more from my mistakes, so can see immense value in the missteps I may have made in accomplishing this goal.