Taper Dreams

Let's get this out of the way: it's been almost a month since my last post. In that time, I've been busying myself with a family vacation, a trip to the circus with Jack, beating Steve at Rummikub, working like a maniac, and... the occasional run.

My half marathon trisko is just a few weeks away. I've completed some really solid long runs, so I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the race in a respectable time. I'm also confident that this will not be my finest work ever.

I was chatting with Tom from Runners' Lounge recently. He said that to have a really successful race, everything has to come together: running, work, family - everything. It's a beautiful thing when it happens, but it's also rare. For me, for this race, the stars have not aligned. I think the biggest problem is that my shorter runs have lacked the intensity I've put into my long runs, so my speed work has not been very strong.

Why is this? Well, I've thought about it so much that it's a post in and of itself, so I'll shelf that one for later. Now I am truly excelling at tapering. In fact, I am over-achieving by not running at all. Steve is out of town this week, so I've been spending lots of time hanging out with Jack. I'll grab a 5 miler on Saturday, then run 8 with my training group on Sunday. Then, just a few easy runs before the race, and that's it.

Maybe it's been this lack of running that caused me to have a really crazy nightmare last night.

It was the day of the race, and I decided it would be a good idea to go to the dentist, "just really quick, before the race." Yes, in my dream, the dentist's office was open at 6:00 in the morning on a Sunday. Just go with it. The dentist had just finished telling me that I was going to need to get braces again (braces are a recurring theme in Betsy anxiety dreams)when I realized I had completely forgotten my running clothes at home.

I had to call my mom and ask her to go to my house to get them for me. I tried my best to walk her through the exact details of what I needed, because if you're running 13.1 miles, any old thing will not do. She kept getting distracted and couldn't find what I needed. My mom was ignoring my requests for the Wright Socks SLX or at least the DLX in favor of talking about how cute and little Jack's socks are when, mercifully, the alarm went off.