Tapering

As you might know, the Wasatch Back Relay race is NEXT WEEK. (Yay!) So, for these past couple of weeks I've been tapering my weekly mileage. Last week I only did 20, this week will be 20, and next week I'm only running 8 (followed, of course, by the race itself, which is a total of 17-something miles).

I'm super excited. I followed the training plan that the Ragnar Relay series suggested. It incorporates everything from hill runs, to double and triple runs (to simulate running more than once within a 24-hour period), to the infamous long run. I looked forward to the long runs the most.

In fact, two weeks ago I ran a 15-miler, the longest run the training plan had scheduled. Before that the farthest I'd run was a half marathon. I was soooo nervous for the 15-miler, even trying to talk myself out of it, thinking that my two legs could never carry me that far. I mean, that's 15 miles. Fifteen miles! All week I was worried about my long run. Could I do it? What if I ran too much during the week leading up to it?

And then something just clicked the Saturday of the run. I told myself, "Okay, Christy. Fifteen miles. Think of what you'll feel like when you finish those 15 miles." That's all it took -- visualizing the end result. And I did run 15 miles, and I finished those 15 miles faster than I ran the 13.1 of the Salt Lake Half Marathon.

Today I was thinking back to when I first started running. I used to think that running 3 miles was hard, that it was something you had to train for to be good at. Look at how far I've come. Never would I have thought that I could run 15 miles at a time. But I did. And the crazy thing about it? After those 15 miles were done, I wanted to keep going. I still had energy left. That's CRAZY TALK, people!!