Tapering Has Officially Begun

This morning, I ran my shortest Saturday run since February 7. Today's 7-mile run officially began my week of tapering, leading up to the marathon next Sunday. Appropriately mellow songs shuffled through my MP3 player this morning, and my only goal was to stay around 9-minute miles (preferably 9 minutes or less). I was able to do this, but I still didn't like seeing my stopwatch showing 1 hour.

Speaking of stopwatches, I received a strange error message when I hooked my iPod (which is just an expensive stopwatch now) up to my computer last night. It said that my iPod needed to be formatted, and since I don't use my iPod as an MP3 player anymore, I clicked OK. This morning, the iPod and the Blackberry were only fractions of a second off. Apparently, my iPod righted itself. I'll still be using 2 stopwatches until I get a Garmin anyway.

This morning was the first Saturday since the very beginning of my marathon training (which began last December) that I have not run with the Runner's World group. (I think I may have missed early on during the holidays, if even then?) This group has quietly become a very significant part of my life, and I was disappointed to miss, as I'm sure there was lots of celebration and inspiration this morning (as well as a potluck breakfast), but duty called--and my son and I are having a great morning together.

This will be an interesting week. I hope to get some good sleep and to eat some great meals.

4-18-09
Distance: 7 miles
Time: 1:00:09
Avg. Mile Pace: 8:28