Amy Lu's View

Let the Time of Tapering commence.

And it is off on a dramatic start (or maybe hardcore training ended on a dramatic note).

On paper (or the screen) my last long run looks awesome. I almost made 22 miles (21.94) at a 9.34 pace.

But the REST of the story (yes, quoting Paul Harvey, child of the 70’s here) isn’t captured in this stat. It doesn’t tell how I ran out of water around mile 15 so stopped the clock for 15 minutes or so while I tried to find water at the Mill City Museum (fail) and eventually in the Guthrie bathroom.

This experience left me with several questions:

• Why the f*#k aren’t the public water fountains on and working in May? (I was planning on refilling my water bottle with this method).
• Did I cheat by stopping the clock and “taking a break”? Or am I tougher because I stopped and then kept going?
• What did the patrons of the Mill City Museum and the Guthrie think of the sweaty middle-aged white lady wandering around?
• Why didn’t I start my run before 10:30 am before it was already getting hot?
• How did my run start out so good (9:15 minute per mile pace) and end up so wrong (almost 11:00 minute per mile pace)?
• Why didn’t I run 0.06 more miles and actually do 22 miles?

Okay, I do know the answer to that last question…I was so wiped by the end of my run, that it was all I could do to keep going (and I wasn’t looking at my mileage). In fact, I was so tired, and slightly nauseous, that I didn’t even want to EAT or DRINK ALCOHOL. I even violated my cardinal Amy rule and consumed most of my post-run calories via sports/health drinks and yogurt, with little chewing involving. (My prime directive is that calories should be delivered via chewing, unless alcohol is involved). But don’t worry, after a “nap”–mostly dozing in bed for two hours and moaning–I was able to commence with chewing and alcohol.

And upside is that I gained a little empathy for Chad and his general preference NOT eating.

Which finally brings me to the actually most dramatic part of the End of Serious Training/Start of Tapering: “The Rescue of Chad.” Thank the running deities, I freed myself from the bed and a snuggling Mama Pepper Kitty when I did and realized a storm was on it’s way, and Chad was out running in it. (Chad had started his run late in the afternoon because he had a mock trial in the morning).

In my groggy post-nap fugue, I was frantically trying to look up the weather.com hourly forecast and figure out how to locate Chad during our Google location sharing (usually he’s keeping tabs on me because he’s opposed to texting “Hey, where are you?”).

So, more questions:

• Was the weather actually going to get bad enough that Chad would want to cut his run short?
• Would I be able to find him?
• Did I need to put on “real” pants (not flannel PJ bottoms) and a bra to rescue him?

Eventually, wearing jeans AND a bra (and the other obvious clothing items to make me socially acceptable) I started out to find Chad. I figured I could just drive around and the weather didn’t actually get that bad, oh well.

In case you don’t know, I’m super scared of storms. As soon as I got out our alley, I was scared I was in the middle of a tornado. Yes, this was a total overreaction, but it was super windy and there was a bunch of dirt blowing around that made things look ominous. I was in a car and was scared…what the hell was going on with Chad who was just out in the elements?

Unnecessarily long story short…Chad soon called and said “Yeah, I’m ready to be done with this.” Luckily, he had safely made it to the lobby of a neighbhorhood bar (Bunny’s NE, for you locals) after only spending a short amount of time being pelted by rain. And yeah, I felt pretty smart to be able to say “I’m ALREADY in the car, will be there shortly!!”)  Wifely WIN! Chad was just happy/relieved that I wasn’t still napping.

So now we are safely home, eating chips, watching TV, latch hooking/playing video games (sure I don’t have to explain who is doing which) and drinking wine and bourbon. Okay, not THAT much different than non-tapering time, except by degree, so tapering has officially begun.

Our weekly running total goes down next week by over 2 HOURS (from 8 hours and 15 minutes to only 6 hours) Whoo-hoo! More time for drinking and blogging.

You’re on notice.