On the first week of taper, my tri coach gave to me….

Many yards of swimming!
Some decreased run time!
ONE! Hard! Track workout!
12 long run miles, 3 french hens 2 turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree
*ok I may just be a bit excited about the holidays or the caffeine has kicked in this morning*

Taper started this week.  I celebrated by getting back in the pool for the first time in a month.  Don't judge, grad school life is a bit insane and pool access is always the hardest thing to coordinate.  I even attempted to get up and go to masters yesterday, only to find that the 6-7am workout really means doors open sometime after 6 and then everyone rushes in to do an abbreviated workout.  Not cool, BAM, not cool.  I'm looking at other masters options that might make it more likely for me to get in a pool on a regular schedule for training next year.  Anyway, I ended up taking my swim gear to work and going to the campus rec center between work and class.

I have a reasonable idea about what I'd like to do for this marathon, as well as optimistic hopes for a best case scenario, but I don't know the course well enough to know what exactly will be possible.  Still, my last long run at sea level gave me some idea of what I can run over distance and my split long run this past weekend, back at altitude, while difficult, gave me more confidence.  So now we're down to just resting the legs while keeping them sharp and we'll see what happens!  I'll write a post more about my marathon history sometime in the next couple weeks to give some context to whatever happens on race day.

In more immediate news, I am very much looking forward to fall break from school!  There are no classes at all the week of Thanksgiving (very different than when I was in college) and so the dogs and I are heading to Scottsdale to spend the week with Jeff and Puck.  It will be the first time the dogs have all seen each other since July 29th!  I will have a big stack of grading to do for one of my classes and a stats project to work on but otherwise it'll be a lot of relaxing and enjoying the break.

Happy hump day!