Final Countdown

Eeeek less than a week out from Victoria. I am definitely feeling the taper-related emotional roller coaster. This time last week I was feeling ready, confident, excited, sure of myself…. and then right before the weekend I was bombarded with a flood of self-doubt, allowing negative self-talk to sneak in on my runs. Thursday we hit the false creek sea wall for one final speedwork sesh, aiming to alternate our ‘race pace’ with easier intervals, and I found my thinking was often along the lines of, “Who am I kidding?? There’s no way I can run this fast!” I have such a love/hate relationship with tapering. On the one hand there’s more time on your hands to just chill, but it also means more time to obsess and stress about every little detail of the race. I’m feeling a lot more positive after Sunday’s 16km run to ‘stonehenge’ and back, which was nearly race-pace the entire time and felt pretty comfortable, but I am feeling so anxious at the same time. Sunday, hurry up and get here!

After refueling at starbucks with the elite running boys club, Ev and I had a race POA pow wow over tea. The verdict: rather than doing regularly scheduled walk breaks (aka 20 and 1s or something along those lines), we will walk the water stations. I feel good about this, and feel good having a race PLAN. Thanks for indulging my nervous obsessing, friend!

One last thing- a HUGE congrats to my lovely friend, former team mate, Halifax running buddy and comedic genius, Alison, who ran her first marathon in Maine yesterday, clocking a speedy 3:34! AMAZING!! I literally just scoured the internet for photos of us competing in Surf League together, and somehow this is the best I could do, circa Nationals 2005?

Alison, Jenni, Me

We’re clearly not competing in anything in this photo other than gunning for the least-focused-competitiors award. If someone had told me back when we were doing those 2km beach runs that some day we would both be running 42 km I would have laughed in their faces! So fun we’re both doing this on opposite sides of the country. So proud of you!

Ok 6 sleeps and 3 runs to go until the big day!