the taper begins...

Leadville training weekend marked the last of my serious runs before Hardrock. I'm now in taper mode, running only once a day and no more than five miles or so. I will race twice this weekend, Friday at the Firecracker 5K in Leadville and on Sunday at the Summer Roundup. As Friday and Saturday will be my last days of serious drinking until the Hardrock finish line, I don't forsee me giving the Roundup any serious effort.

Ended up running 1488 miles over the first half of the year. Would have liked to hit 1500 just because it's a nice, round number, but 12 miles over six months isn't gonna make or break my race.

Here's the monthly data taken from my training log at RW.com. I figured out early that I'd hafta log over 250 miles a month to have a shot at finishing HR, and since March I've been hitting that goal.

Here's the weekly mileage graph. Looks all over the place, but the lower mileage weeks were usually calculated, as I'd feel my body breaking down and knew I needed some rest. Often, the lower mileage weeks were also after a hard ultra. Notice the nice run in February after I hit the lottery for HR and realized I had to get my ass in gear...

Not sure what's up with this graph, really hard to read but it looks all scientific 'n shit so I thought I'd throw it out there...

So that's that. Hardrock looms, with Leadville to follow, and all the hard training is done. Frankly, I'll be happy come August when the goal turns to qualifying for Boston. It's hard for me to run all those miles, especially considering February, March, April, and part of May really sucked ass weather-wise. Gonna be great to "only" have to run once a day, and not spend entire weekends busting my ass up in the mountains.