Running with Jack

I am sooooo relieved…Running Chick has clarified everything! I’m not losing my mind… it’s only taper madness descending upon me. I mean even my wife and coworker's have been giving me strange looks the last couple weeks, like I’m even stranger than normal or something. Nope, it’s just taper madness.

So what’s that? Well for me it has a lot to do with paranoia, forget Friday the 13th, that ain’t nothin’, wait to you start tapering, oooh yeah!

A couple examples are always good:

- We are having problems with our car, it likes to die at traffic lights - so had it in the shop yesterday - no luck still doing it – my first thought – Lord I hope the car doesn’t die on the way to the marathon next week!

- I went running last night – great 10K run by the way – but every time I passed a dog I went way around – I was sooo afraid of getting bit one-week-before-my-marathon!

- I have been catching myself avoiding obstacles as I walk for fear of tripping and injuring myself!

- I am totally paranoid about what I eat in the moment, is it too much, too little, too fatty, blah-blah-blah.

- I rethink my marathon strategy about 60 times a second at all hours of the day and night.

- I am already worried that I will forget to bring something to the marathon.

Other associated problems/symptoms:

- I can’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time.

- I feel obsessively guilty about not training hard in the moment.

- My running muscles flex when I see a jogger.

- I am totally obsessed with stretching.

- I am checking the weather report excessively (current prognosis 20C/70F, 60% chance of rain on May 21st, 80% air humidity).

- I actually don’t talk about running with my wife, friends and coworkers (I mean this is just NOT normal).

- I keep posting the marathon countdown (8 days 5 hours 44 minutes 37 seconds).

- I have regressed back to my “Upstate NY dry humor” (you have to have experienced this to understand this one ;-)

- My blog reports are getting weirder as the days progress.

In conclusion - although I am still as busy as ever getting on with daily life I feel like I have lots of extra time because I’m not running so much.

So here I am singing the tapering blues, but I have to admit that I am starting to feel stronger each day. It is becoming obvious that my body is rejuvenating all those torn muscles, sore bones and whatever else that loosened up after running all those miles. I actually get little bursts of power in my step when I walk around, not like the stumbling I did while recovering from long runs. Now if I can only get the loose screw in the head fixed;-)

Happy running!