Tuesday Taper Thoughts
I have one word for this morning's workout: SLOGFEST. If you were to have been circling the Johnson C. Smith track this morning at 6 a.m. with me, you would have witnessed a couple things.
A) Fog. Erin's head in a kind of fog. Erin's legs feeling like they're in a fog.
B) Fog (the real kind)
Tuesday workouts have been a regular part of my running routine since I entered as a freshman at Davidson. I would not hesitate to admit I'm a huge fan of the hashtags tracktuesday, trackgirltuesday, trackisback...I can be easily persuaded to take a picture or two on a sunny afternoon in spring, buns on, feeling the rubber under your feet as you work your way through intervals, speedwork, threshold stuff. Things I love- the track.
Things I don't love quite as much- tapering. With eleven days to go to the Trials in LA (holy guac, does that really say 11?!), I'm in the stage of training which means tapering for the race is beginning. I have never been one to love to taper, as I would always rather run more mileage. Tapering, in my opinion, is a key part of training which always has wierd side effects. Today's workout reflected an important aspect of beginning a resting phase, which is that it doesn't always feel good.
Here's a more streamlined explanation:
My brain on tapering: "Hey, this is different. We're resting now- that means I'll feel great every day, have tons of energy, and be running less mileage!"
My body on tapering: "Hey, this is different. That's odd...not sure about how I feel about it...guess I'll just act really wonky until I decide what to do. Cue strange heavy feelings!"
Or, for example:
Expecations: bounciness! Walking on clouds! Amazing hydration and workout-ability!
Reality: Hmmm....not sure all those pieces have gotten the memo yet...
So, to re-focus on this morning's workout, I had 7 by 1000m at threshold pace followed by some fast 400s. The run started decently, only a few stomach grumblings as I got my body moving, but after getting started I really just couldn't feel good. My legs felt fairly flat, and not by any means exhausted or in pain- just...sluggish. Meh. Like I was running through pudding. Now, don't get me wrong here- I'm not unhappy with the workout. Overall, it was still a solid run, and even though I was just a second or two off my goal threshold pace for the repeat k's, the effort was there. This feeling, however, is really the heart of this post. It's a strange feeling to feel both satisfied and dissatisfied with a workout- just as I was today. I'll take a good effort, but the perfectionist in me wants more. Always MORE- what can I do to be perfect? How can I nail those splits without being a second off? Second-guessing: am I doing things right? What happened this morning so that I was feeling flat?
One of the hardest things to learn about running is acknowledging and accepting workouts for what they are. It's easy to totally, completely blow a workout (like, disaster-level flop-out) and look back and say, wow, that was a bad one. When you have workouts like that, it's even in many ways easier to digest them and overcome them, because for me, bad workouts = crystal-clear motivation. When I have a bad workout, I have to work at being positive and not angry, but those emotions give me drive and push to better myself and do more for my running.
The workouts that are just middle-ground, though- these can be a little trickier. It's harder to accept feeling mediocre in a workout, because you know you are doing everything else correctly. There's no question of what am I missing, but rather, an acknowledgement of what your body is telling you and staying right on track with what you've been doing. On a grander scale, mediocrity can be scary for runners because unlike being drastically out of shape or far from goals, it doesn't inspire the same drive. For me, it takes some extra mental vigor to resist making a mediocre workout into anything more than it should be. My first thought can be to overanalyze, trying to find something that I did wrong. However, a workout doesn't have to mean anything more than it should. One of my constant goals in training is to put this into practice- I don't need to beat myself up unnecessarily over a workout if it a) wasn't "bad" and b) is part of the training process. Workouts are meant to be sessions of improvement and growth- which doesn't happen in a single repeat, or a single day.
So, today's workout and upcoming taper runs- all part of the process. Workouts like today remind me to ground myself in my training and trust my fitness. Because there's nothing essentially wrong with the intervals I did this morning, that just clues me in that it's one of the workouts that say things like, hey, we're just feeling a little slow today. Not a big deal, just take it in stride, regard the effort as there, and know that you are going to feel a little weird as you start to taper. This has always been a strange idea to me, and I always come back to taper time knowing that I might feel a little off at first. Along with tapering and moving through the next days of workouts and runs, though, I am getting more and more excited to head to LA! Not to mention, the excellent excuse to go to bed earlier and earlier, lounge, persuade boyfriend/family members to give calf massages, go to more yoga classes, online shop for marathon afterparty outfit...hey- tapering actually is pretty cool!