Beautiful morning paddling yesterday…until it started to rain.

Only one week left till my first big race of the season! This time next week, I will have finished the Lake Tahoe Relay and looking forward to the Rock Tahoe Half Marathon the following weekend. I am a little nervous about back-to-back races, but I am feeling excited at the same time. I haven’t had a “big” race (over 5k) in two years and I love the feeling that comes with them. Butterflies at the start, determination in the middle, and accomplishment at the finish. There is truly nothing quite like it.

With some big weeks coming up, I decided to gear down a bit this week, or “taper,” as anyone training for a half marathon or longer refers to it. I was also feeling my hike to the top of Mt. Tallac till about Wednesday, so being nice to my body and not over stressing it was a must. That meant taking my mileage down slightly, but I was still working on speed to try and improve pace. Right now, my long runs have been in the 10:30 per mile range, and I really want to be under 10:00 on race day. Hopefully the interval run and pace run I did this week will help. So, here’s what my week looked like:

• Monday 6/1 – It’s June! Holy crap. Where did the time go? Feeling pretty sore from a long run on Saturday and the summit hike on Sunday, I took today off from running and got a long walk in with the pup.
• Tuesday 6/2 – Ditto.
• Wednesday 6/3 – Ran on my favorite trail with my favorite little furry running buddy for National Running Day! It was an awesome run and we just had fun. Didn’t worry about pace or total mileage, but we got 3.25 miles in.
• Thursday 6/4 – This was definitely a good, quality run. It consisted of a mile warm-up at about 10:30 pace, followed by 8 x 400 meter intervals. The intervals were at 9:00 per mile pace with 11:00 per mile pace recovery in-between. I love intervals and always have. My total mileage for the day was 5.36.
• Friday 6/5 – Ran on the Flume trail again with the fur kid. Once again, didn’t worry about pace or total milage, but it was about 3.25 miles.
• Saturday 6/6 – Today was a cross training day and I started it with an hour of spin class in the morning, followed by a couple of hours on the Lake paddle boarding. It was a beautiful day, until it started raining. We got off the Lake just in time.
• Sunday 6/7 – 8.1 mile morning run at 10:43 pace. This was my last “long” run till my race next weekend. It’s all downhill from here!

Total running miles: 20.46

Total paddling miles: 2

Total spinning miles: 13.8

Next week, I’ll gear it down a little more leading up to the race. There is no point in going balls-out this time of year, only to get injured and be sidelined for the rest of the racing season. Train smarter, not harder. Right?! What are some ways you gear up, or down, leading up to a big race?