The Week Before the Half

You gotta love a taper week!

Yesterday we stepped down our training miles to only 8. (I just LOVE saying I walked ONLY 8 miles.) Yep, this is the official taper week before the Parkersburg Half Marathon!

At 7 a.m. we started walking along the Alum Creek trail 4 miles out and back. We couldn't find enough mile markers to be accurate, and not one of the three of us has GPS, so we decided to walk straight out for 1 hour then turn around. We tend to be faster than a 15-min mile on most days, so it should work out that we walked a little farther than 8 miles.

The temps were perfect for a long-distance day! It was warm enough that we could wear shorts and a T-shirt, but chilly enough to keep us from getting over-heated. The skies were overcast and we even had some pretty light sprinkles that didn't last long.

At one point I asked Deb and Elaine if I was going too slow. (For some reason I was setting the pace that morning.) They both said no, I was going too fast. Though I had forgotten to wear my heart rate monitor, I wasn't breathing hard at all and I felt I was not working hard enough. What a nice switch for me!

With about 2 miles left to go, we joined up with the Buckeye Striders who started after us, and Elaine and I did pick up the pace a little bit. We ended up finishing the walk in about 58 min. Though I'm sure our faster pace did add to our faster than 2-hour finish time, I think the amount of time we spent waiting for one traffic light to turn green also had an impact. We crossed the road easier on our way back than we did on our way out.

It was a nice, early Saturday morning walk. We've trained harder than we typically do for a half marathon, and it will be very interesting to see how it affects next week's race.