Taper off –
“to become gradually smaller or weaker, or happen less often”
To taper in a sporting event capacity means a period of reduced training desired to eliminate training-induced fatigue but without losing fitness. Read more about tapering here.
Basically a little rest before the big event – HURRAH! These last two weeks for me before the run are all about reducing the duration of my training, eating* and sleeping well and just generally resting up a bit and taking it easy.
Apparently people get a bit irritable while tapering, which can either be a case of missing running, or the thought that fitness and all that hard work will disappear down the drain like Georgie’s boat in Stephen King’s IT. Not sure I’m irritable (or no more so than normal perhaps, ha) as actually I’m enjoying a bit of a rest.
Thanks to Dave “cool as” Duck I was treated to an extra sports massage by Mike from Rayners Ergonomic Sports Therapy in between my usual ones from Hester (based in Trimnasium near the train station).
A last couple of £2 training plan runs saw a few people come running with me for the last time on some nice early morning jogs, and I headed up to Lincolnshire to do the Lincoln Half Marathon for a nice pootle round as well as catching up with friends and family.
I also got invited to speak on Radio Gloucestershire and Radio Lincolnshire so I headed into the studios to have a chat about the run and my fundraising, while trying really hard to remember to not swear or say “ummmm” a lot.
And then all of a sudden, just like that, the two weeks were up and it was time to fly out. Crap.
I spent the night before flying sorting all my food out into individual bags for each day, weighing out all my snacks and working out how many calories to make sure I had more than 2000 calories each day. This was made more stressful by the fact I totally forgot I needed food for the Sunday, leading to a last minute dash to Go Outdoors in Gloucester to buy more dehydrated food.
In my head by this time I was going to have finished everything and be sat in a zen-like calm state perhaps reading a book, or watching some TV. In reality I was in a zombie-like stressed out state unable to think straight. Cue Sam swooping in like an adventure fairy godmotherfriend who could clearly tell I was not quite right and came and picked me up and fixed it all.
Time to go run.
*carb loading for the win, this also includes cake
The Paps Life 