Rando Thoughts from my Taper Brain

So apparently some people actually have lives other than training.

I am not one of those people.

I know that taper is for me to rest my body.  The hay is in the barn.  I've paid the man.  The miles are run.  But guah.  What to DO with all this time? 

Saturday night we had a hunormous hail storm hit at 1:45 am.  Of course I was up, natch.  Me and sleep, still not good friends.  Always one to love watching it storm, I peered out the backdoor to take a look. The backyard was covered in ice in a matter of minutes and the leaves from my trees were pulverized into a fine mulch.  A fantastic lightning storm accompanied the hail, keep in mind this photo was taken around 2 am!

Erin mentioned to me that Kroger sold caramel apple flavored candy corn.  Knowing that Michelle is a fellow candy corn fiend, I decided to pick up a bag for her before our run at the lake Sunday.  Now, I don't normally shop at Kroger or any other larger grocery store.  The store I frequent is small and filled mostly with fresh cheeses, meats, breads and produce. The "hardlines" section is very small and consists mostly of organic fare.  So being in a huge grocery store was like a wonderland of junk food for me.  Quickly finding the candy corn, I went up and down a few other aisles, curious to see what else the shelves held.  Mostly crap. Including bacon flavored popcorn.  For reals.

Our admin made my week by surprising me with new markers!  Dry erase in a wide selection of fun colors (two purples!) and, gasp, my favorite, Mr. Sketch scented markers!  She splurged and got me the bonus pack of the bigger markers.  I was so excited to sniff all the new to me scents including Bubble Gum and Cotton Candy.  What can I say, I'm really easy to impress!

Collin surprised me with a teeny white pumpkin for fall.  So cute, right?  And yes, it's sitting on my work Bible.  No, that's not sacrilegious.  God made pumpkins.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I think I might have killed my group last night.  We were supposed to run 25 minutes easy but I took them on a new (to them) route and we ended up being out for 38 minutes.  Longer than many of them have ever run.  They all hung in there but they all looked mighty tired when we finished.  Oops, sorry y'all.  We ran about an 11 min mile and that was a great taper pace for me while pushing them. Win win! 


Tonight I ran errands like crazy getting ready to go out of town.  Like a boss, I ate my Panera mac n cheese while heading to pick up some books a friend's book club donated.  What?  You don't eat mac n cheese while driving?  I'm just super skilled like that.

My hip is tight this week but not hurting. In the past when my hip has been tight before a race, I've PR'd so let's hope that rings true again. I signed up for auto tweeting my splits so we'll see how that works. If you follow me on Twitter and don't see any updates for a while on Sunday, assume it's not working, not that I dropped out, k? Okay, well, maybe shoot me a text to be sure.

The shuffle is on charge, laundry is churning away, I'm drinking my weight in water each day...preparations are almost done.  I have the small matter of deciding what to wear and what to eat Saturday night but other than that...

I'm ready to head to D.C.  Read to see my girls, ready to experience some fall weather and ready to run this race.  I'm feeling good but who knows what race day will hold? That's part of the excitement though, the anticipation of the crowds, putting my training to the test and looking forward to crossing that finish line and proving to myself, once again, that I can do anything I set my mind to. 

Just try and stop me.