TAPER!

Hallelujah, praise the lord... my taper has arrived, much like a christmas gift I waited for as a child.

Why is this so important to me? Well, there are a number of reasons:

- shorter runs
- more time with my family, as a result of shorter runs
- less emphasis on logging the high miles
- more emphasis, heavy emphasis really, on knowing what my race pace feels like so i can recreate it.
- milestone closest to the actual event
- even closer to wearing new running shoes (right after the race really)
- let the healing begin...

This last one is the most important really. The taper is not so much about reducing training in order to peak or something... that's just a nice side-effect. The taper is meant to allow the body (muscles, bones, cartilage, blisters etc.) to HEAL. I know that might sound silly right? Why would a runner, a theoretically in-shape being, need to recover from something? Is there a real injury that every marathoner has that we don't know about?

Well, to be quite honest, yes. Each marathoner who works hard and piles on the miles is doing some level of damage to their muscles at the very least. The good news is that all that stuff heals during "recovery" which might be a day off a week or two. The bad news is that your body never fully has time to heal enough to get back to where it was before. Believe me, this is true.

The Taper is meant to allow your body to take a break prior to the big event. Reducing weekly mileage by 10-50% has a DRAMATIC effect I'm here to tell you. Whole muscle groupings complain less (if at all) anymore. Seemingly insurmountable aches and pains reduce to mere inconveniences that sporadically pop up from time to time unexpectedly (if at all).

All that said, I'm REALLY happy to be tapering - but not for any of those silly technical reasons... I like it because I can be lazy (to some extent) and, in this case in life... it really pays off to be lazy :)