Pittsburgh Marathon Training: Week 16

After all those long miles and hard runs, tapering is under way!  Cutting back and recovering is on the agenda for the next three weeks.  I'll also be doing my best to avoid the "taper crazies" of phantom pains and high levels of anxiousness.  Time to let my body do its thing!

Monday: Rest Day

Tuesday: Rest Day

Wednesday: 6 Miles - Knowing that tapering was about recovering in preparation for the big day, I decided to add an additional rest day before starting this week's cycle.  My knee was still feeling out of sorts and this run did nothing to boost my confidence that the time off had done anything to heal whatever was wrong.  I kept things slow hoping that some movement would stretch out whatever muscles were bunching up.

Thursday: 5 Miles - I felt no better or worse after yesterday's run so off I went to Shoes and Brews.  Running with other definitely helped keep my mind off the nagging tenderness in my knee.  However,  I'm now wondering if I should have set today as another rest day following more of an alternating pattern until my legs were back to normal.

Friday: Rest Day

Saturday: 12 Miles - Considering the trend from earlier in the week, I wasn't sure how today's long run would turn out.  Spending extra time stretching all the different muscles in my left leg, I did pretty well at keeping a decent pace without too much pain.  It was only in the last mile that my knee locked up making me feel like I was limping more than running.  Once we got back to the store, I worked on loosening things up again, which went a long way toward mitigating the discomfort.

Sunday: Rest Day

Looking back, I spent more of this week resting than running.  I have been spending all day reminding myself that that's okay.  The important miles are in and now it's about getting to 100% for May 7th.  Over the next two weeks, I'll let me body dictate my running schedule and have faith that all will turn out well.  That's all I can do, so no point worrying otherwise.

Happy running!
Sean