13.7 into Taper

What can I say... in many ways I think this training has made me wiser. Wise enough to not be an idiot anymore and wind up 2 years outta my running shoes. I ran 13.7 instead of 23 and I could have done more.

It's a hard transition into learning to not push it past something feeling wrong or off. 2 weeks and counting it wouldn't be good for me to go crazy and force it. My legs these days are tighter than I don't know what. All these miles upon miles upon miles over the past several weeks and months start to take a toll and I knew I needed a chance to iron it out first.

Marisa has a friend that does sports massage so we reached out to her to get me an appointment for next week and the friday after that before the big day. In the coming 2 weeks while I will still run, it will just be far shorter and my goals for the remainder of my time is to do as much PT as possible and do as much stretching and loosening as possible. I need my legs to be jello-y fresh for this thing. Looking back over my log, I have run at least a half marathon (sometimes a wee less, but I am talking a mile less at best) or more 10 times since January. And that doesn't even count all the other runs I have been wedging in. Overall cumulative mileage, I think I am actually under a more formal, regimented training program, but for my first marathon, its a heck of a jump for me, and its a heck of a jump as my first race back, so its a bit of a shock to the old system.

Overall, I feel good. I feel as ready as one can feel for her first marathon. I got a large dose of encouragement from Tara, one of my dearest all time friends who ran Boston a few years ago and gave me more inspiration than ever to do it. She also did it with knee injuries that kept her at the last big push of her training left to train on an elliptical machine. Her encouragement right now was everything I needed.

The fundraising has continued, although I am still so far off of the goal I set for myself there. That kinda bums me out. I will get one last big push out to my friends and family and see if I can't get the total up a little bit more. I keep thinking if people had the exposure to the kids at the shelter that I did, the donations would increase. So my next email, probably next weekend will tell the story of the most memorable little boy I had in shelter over my many years. With any luck it will raise the totals a little more.

That's about all I got. Today I am doing some well needed spring cleaning and the I am going to have some fun with the foam roller, which will be fun.

Oh and as a parting side story that made me smile... Friday night I got together with my cadre of gay boys that I hang out with once a month or so. We wind up in some random gay bar where Marisa and I are the only women in the place and I have to say, I am in my element there. I think I am more a gay man than anything else, so my Friday night gay boy outings are fun. This past Friday was no different except apparently my runner butt atracted a lot more attention than ever. In a room full (and I mean full) of gay men, its rather funny that my butt is the one that got all the notice. Apparently marathon training makes your butt look good. I may have to keep this up for the next 20 years. Ha.

More next week.