strange days in training-- an experiment of one

I'm still not clear on the idea of tapering. I guess I'm performing an experiment. I'm sorta tapering.

My race (LBL 60K) is in 6 days. A taper for that would have me taking it fairly easy at this point. I scaled the miles back a little this week, with 26 mid-week miles. Today and yesterday I did a little hill work at Clinton Lake and Forest Glen for 25 weekend miles-- too much if I'm tapering for LBL. But neither was over 15M, so I missed my usual distance run. Instead, I went for intensity and tried to run them hard (when it wasn't too slimy to get footing).

My routine has definitely changed-- more so with LBL in 6 days-- but I'm obviously not tapering for LBL. So here's the plan (experiment).

Clinton Lake is 3 weeks away and I've chosen to focus on it. Tapering for CL is a bit weird since I'll be doing a 37.3M run (race!) just 2 weeks out from CL. I've never been good at holding back during a race and thinking of it as just a training run (this has gotten me into trouble with at least one 100M attempt). I'm gonna try anyway, and the 60K will serve as an over-distance run for CL. It's on a very different course from CL (fewer hills), further, and (gulp) just 2 weeks out. The hill-work this weekend-- even without the distance-- should help keep me under control at LBL. If not, well, it'll be an over-distance with cojones.

My knocked back mid-week runs make the taper 4 weeks, but includes some very un-taper-like runs up to 2 weeks out from the race. Last weekend was also weird with a fast 21M on Sat. and nothing Sun. Oh yeah, and this was my first week running 100% in Vibrams. Yeah!