Taper Time!

This past week has been quite an upsurge in contributions, and I want to make sure I thank all those who have given generously. Thanks to:
- Ramon Lanus
- Steve Gaertner
- Steve Thomas (Whammy)
- Jonathan Klay
- Mark Patton (Airborne!)
- Arfa Alam
- Christina DiBartolomeo
- Stephen Rudd
- Fran and Ted Genger

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Their donations have added to the generosity of everyone else and we are now up to a whopping $2,715! Thanks again.

This past week I began what is probably the hardest processes for me in training: the taper. For those uninitiated, tapering is the process leading up to an endurance event in which a person draws down the intensity and length of their training in order to give their body time to recover for maximal performance prior to the actual event. In my case, I peaked at 130 miles in a single week, but, with 3 weeks to go, I am doing a tapering period of 70 miles, then 50 miles, then less than 20 miles in the week leading up to LOST.

My mileage for the past week:

Week of
		25-Jan
SUN	am	0
	pm	0
MON	am	8.5
	pm	0
TUE	am	8
	pm	0
WED	am	12.5
	pm	0
THU	am	10.5
	pm	0
FRI	am	20
	pm	0
SAT	am	10.5
	pm	0
		70

This might sound easier to do, but for me it's incredibly hard. With tapering, your body begins to recovery and repair the damage of past training (i.e. torn muscle fibers, strained tendons, achy knees, etc.). That basically means that everything that has been mostly just dull aches up until this point now surfaces as much more. On top of everything else, anyone who's trained for a marathon or other endurance event knows, with tapering your legs begin to feel as if they're filled with lead. While doing 36 miles last week, or the 21 coming back from the FTX, was by no means perfectly easy, doing 20 yesterday actually felt like it took a lot more effort. Go figure. Regardless, Erin and I have discussed how odd it is with how much my mileage has gone up. My "easy week" this week consisted of a 20-miler one day, and a 10-miler the next, and still came to 70 miles. That was extremely rare for me in the past.

So, now we're on the home stretch. Two weeks to go. Please keep passing the word on to others about the charities, and I'll just keep on stretching, prepping, and pushing on down the road.

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The Last Push: My 130-Mile Week

First, as always, a thanks to those who have contributed recently:
-Laura Peeling
-Roshini Prakash Nair
-Kerry Pace

Donation total is now up to $2,285! Thanks to everyone for helping.

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Below is my total for my final hard week before I start tapering.

Week of
		18-Jan
SUN	am	0
	pm	0
MON	am	14.5
	pm	0
TUE	am	14.5
	pm	0
WED	am	14.5
	pm	4.5
THU	am	36
	pm	12.5
FRI	am	12.5
	pm	0
SAT	am	0
	pm	21
		130

Total over 6 days: 130 miles. That's more than a 20-mile per day average. It certainly has not been an easy week to get mileage in, especially with all the political hoopla in D.C. this week. The culmination, of course, was the 61 miles I did in a 24-hour period over Thursday-Friday, especially after doing 19 total on Wednesday. Follow that up with a 21-mile run home from Ft. Belvoir on Saturday after a 10-hour day of walking STX lanes at our ROTC FTX in pure darkness, and I think it was a pretty productive week.

Now starts the hard part for me though. Now comes the taper. My tapering plan is to do 70 miles this week, 50 miles the next, and less than 20 leading up to the actual race on February 14. This is the hardest part of training for me. The waiting. The inability to do anything more productive. All I can do now is try to rest up, sleep well, eat well, and focus. Sounds easy, but it's harder than you might think. To top it off, there are less than 18 days left until the actual race! Yikes! We'll see how it goes though.


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The 108-mile Week

Happy belated New Year!

First, a thanks to the following:
-Marie and Mike O'Hara
-Barbara Groger

$2,210 collected so far! Thanks to everyone for their support! DONATE NOW

The miles have been piling on, and as of recently, it has been especially hard with the cold (those in D.C. and the Northeast know exactly what I am talking about). Last week, on my long runs, the temperature at times was in the single digits (weather.com reported that it "felt" like -1!). Running along the Potomac River has not been kind.

Anyways, here are the last five weeks of my mileage:

Week of
		14-Dec	21-Dec	28-Dec	4-Jan	11-Jan
SUN	am	0	0	12.5	10.5	0
	pm	0	0	0	0	0
MON	am	8.5	8.5	0	8.5	8.5
	pm	0	0	0	0	0
TUE	am	14.5	12.5	12.5	12.5	14.5
	pm	0	0	4.5	4.5	4.5
WED	am	8.5	9	8.5	8.5	14.5
	pm	0	0	0	0	4.5
THU	am	13	0	8.5	6.5	8.5
	pm	4.5	0	4.5	0	0
FRI	am	4.5	8.5	30	34	30
	pm	4.5	0	0	0	10.5
SAT	am	22	26	0	10.5	12.5
	pm	0	0	0	0	0
		80	64.5	81	95.5	108

As you'll notice, there was a significant dip during the Christmas period, due to the problems with traveling up to Connecticut and back down to D.C. with Erin. Since Christmas, I have been pushing forward hard with my mileage however.

My main focus this previous week, and this current one, is to do a long run in the morning, followed by significant ones later in the evening and the following morning. I feel that this will help me prepare for the multi-day events and working better with soreness and stopping and starting (a critical transition in ultra's). As usual, I am focusing on pounding the pavement for more and more miles, getting better effort even though my legs are exhausted from previous days of training. Generally after some of these runs, like the one I did on Friday/Saturday, several days to a week are required for rest. I took Sunday off to allow some of my blisters to heal.

This week will be especially hard due to inaugural events in the District, but more importantly I will have one day less due to schedule changes with ROTC. Nevertheless, no time to rest. This will be the final week of pushing training before I am pretty much required to start tapering. In the coming weeks, I will taper down to about 70 miles, than about 50, and then do only about 20 miles or so the week prior to the race.

Updates will keep on coming. Please keep spreading the word about the Fisher House Foundation and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.

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