Fitness Friday: Taper Time

Last Sunday, my running partner for this half marathon and I ran our last long run of 11 miles and now we have begun the taper until race day. I did a 3.11 mile run on my own, which ended up being my fastest 5K time ever at an 8:31 average pace. We also ran 4.16 together this week. In between, it's yoga for strength and flexibility.

This Saturday I will have a 6 mile run to do, which really starts to seem short even though it totally isn't, when your long runs have been much longer than that for so long. Then it's just a 2.5 mile and a 3 mile run during the week next week and lots more yoga and maybe some walking if I find a walking partner, just to stay loose.

With this being my second half marathon, I am feeling more prepared mentally and physically for the race for many reasons. The part I am nervous about is the weather. Ugh! For my first half we were training in the winter and doing outside runs in the cold and on snow and then ran in beautiful running weather (it helped we drove 6 hours south for that run.) This time we have been running mostly in beautiful running weather and it's going to turn cold right before the race.

I have lots of friends running a half marathon this weekend and they are mentioning snow. Eeeek! And then the temps continue to slowly drop through the next week and one forecast model even calls for A LOT of snow around my race day.

Us Minnesotans are hearty when it comes to the weather, but we do like to complain in the fall when it starts getting cold. 30 in October feels very different than 30 in January (or even May, if you remember we got an incredible 18" dumped on us at the beginning of last May which is totally not normal).

Time to dig out my running tights and start figuring out layers.