Week summary: Taper, Snow and Fun!

Feb 28th is the NOLA Mardi Gras marathon and I've begun my taper for it since last week. It's been a while since I posted here. Spring term is keeping me very busy and I've been working on a conference deadline and a fellowship deadline (both on Feb 15th!). To summarize the week that was, here's a mileage chart (right).

I've been doing more tempo runs and recovery runs for this week, and my average pace has come down from 8:15 min/mile to 8:00 min/mile. My weekly mileage has come down to 40 miles from 65 miles a week. I plan to keep this mileage until race week. Overall, I feel strong and well prepared and really look forward to the marathon day.

Baltimore, like most of north-east, has undergone a drastic weather change over the past week culminating in a two-day snowstorm on Friday and Saturday. I did minimal running during that time but it fit perfectly in my taper schedule. Since the snow storm was anticipated, I did my long run on Thursday (2/4) instead. Yesterday was very bad and the two miles seemed almost impossible. Since I wasn't happy with it, I went back to my apartment and did hill-repeats by running up and down the stairs ten times. That turned out to be a great workout!

Today's run was simple. Finish 10 miles at an easy pace. I ran through somewhat plowed N. Charles St and continued towards Under Armor factory near Fort McHenry. Although this was an easy run, running on snow is more exerting but I felt great at the end of my 10 miles. I capped today's run with a double shot of espresso at Starbucks.