Tapering

Truly, one of the most difficult periods of training is the taper. As the volume and intensity gradually drop off until race day the body begins to recover fully from the constant and demanding training. This is also about the time when your brain starts to question all the training you've done until now. Are you ready? Should you have done one more long run or another brick workout? Will it all come together on race day? Every rest day (and there should be more now that you're tapering) youll wonder if you should fit in one more workout. And this is when you must turn off your overactive brain and just trust in your training. You're about 2-3 weeks out from race day (or 1 week out from the Umstead 100 in my case right now) and there's nothing you can do now except recover. So sit back, relax and enjoy your easy weeks because race day is just around the corner!

This post comes at a time when I am indeed tapering so I am very familiar with this scenario. I have trained hard for this race, but there are a lot of unknowns on race day that you can't prepare for, especially during a 100 miler. I will do everything in my power to beat 24 hours, but only race day will tell if that'll be enough.