Diablo Ramblings

Packet pick-up in a few hours.....It's almost Diablo Eve.  This week has felt....well, not how I pictured it. That said, as far as "taper" goes....it has been the best yet.  In fact, as far as all prep for this thing has been concerned, it's been the best yet. Very different from a road marathon when it came to training. There was no 12 week sched taped to the fridge with set runs on set days of set distances.

Prep has really been going on since September and has consisted of getting as many (3-4) runs in a week as possible, and get as high as possible on each one( av. of 2000 ft per run) in my 3 hour window of time in the morning.  Consistently cross training with strength training/ HIIT training also took priority.  I gotta be honest and say that this set up, with it's flexibility and time on the trail has been my favorite way to train so far.  No injuries, no aches and pains. The past two weeks...well, actually last week was as usual, just minus a weekend run. I hit up Brian's spin bike for a killer climbing workout, followed by my creation - "Abs 300" x2, and ran half the Diablo 13.1 course with The Beast later in the week, while doing Abs 300 on a daily basis.

The part of taper that drives us all mad, I think, is that we are active people. We are used to doing activities at a level that is challenging, sweat inducing, and involves voluntarily making yourself uncomfortable.  That is where Abs 300 came in. I wanted something to do daily that did not involve my legs, but was challenging to the point of being painful.  Something that would let me still feel like I was prepping and getting stronger, but allowed the legs to recover and rest. 

I set all my focus on abs, eating super clean, lean, and getting all 8 bottles of water in daily. I also attempted to nap daily. (3 kids....I can dream) I managed at least an hour of down time in the middle of each day, sometimes that involved sleep, sometimes just resting and ignoring whatever chaos was going on in the house.

Monday of this week...well, we all know it was a difficult day.  For me, I set the Boston Marathon to be recorded on Universal Sports, and headed out on a run. I still have not watched it. Maybe Saturday night after Diablo we will, but I just haven't been able to watch it yet.  I text Brian at the end of my run saying it was "fast and freakishly strong."  Just how I wanted my last real run before Diablo to be.

I hiked out to the froggy pond today, and that's it. I'll rest tomorrow and get house cleaned....and then it's time.  The temp has come down a few degrees, but heat or not...I gotta get this one out of my system.  I really feel like if I'm ever going to finish this one, this is the year.  I've had the perfect set up going into it....nothing left but to do it!!

To any/all of you who have offered words of encouragement over the past few months/weeks/days...Thank You.