Time To Taper

After a long 13 weeks of building up, up, up, it's time to taper off and rest the aching muscles.  I had school on Saturday, so my final long run had to be late.  Dave had other things going on in the evening and Dan was over at Paul's house, so I ran alone.  There are parts of running alone that I like a lot better, but in general I prefer company.  I do like listening to my book.  Born To Run is excellent.  There are parts in there that inspire me to go faster and parts that make me want to never run again.  I'm only about 5 hours into it, but I really like it.  I went 13, and really felt pretty good until mile 11.  I made the rookie mistake of running on the same side of the street the entire time, which means my right leg was constantly hitting higher ground than my left.  It didn't even bother me until some pain developed in my right knee.  I moved to the other side of the road, which immediately helped, and finished the final two miles.  I ran two 4.5 mile laps and another 4.  I kept my water in the back of my truck out on the street, so I wouldn't have to stop very long to hydrate and grab a slice of bread.  I didn't have any Jelly Beans or Gummies, so I used Skittles to push me to the end.

I'm really not sure what to do for food the night before the race, or the morning of the race.  We get to Las Vegas at about 5:30 on Friday and have close to a 3 hour drive to Death Valley.  I'm sure we can load up on Gatorade and gels in Vegas and hopefully we can find an Olive Garden or something to do one final carb load.  Maybe we can buy some good bread and peanut butter and honey at the store and have that before the race.  This week will probably be two 5 mile runs and an 8-10 miler on Saturday...nice and easy.