Itchy Legs

I’m 6 days out from my 3rd marathon so, if you’re a runner, you know what that means!  Let Taper Madness – or, as I call them, the Taper Crazies –  begin!

1.  Sunday has finally shown up on Environment Canada’s website.  I’m not sure if I’m happy or if I’m scared.

Let me explain why.  I am slow.  I run a 5+ hour marathon.  I will be finishing my run probably right when the day is getting to be its hottest.  Last year was roughly 15 (or more) degrees C, sunny, and it was pretty uncomfortable by the end.  While I love the no rain aspect I’d really like a little more cloud, although I can hope for wind off the water during the second half.  To be honest I’d be happy if it was even a little bit drizzly.  Downpour or steady rain no.  But if there was a bit of precipitation it would be okay.

2.  I have itchy legs.  I really wanted to run today.  However, I have my runs for this week planned out since I kind of over did it Friday with the 16km Vibram run.  Add onto that the 11 hours I spent at work yesterday and I knew my body needed the rest.  It just seemed like I was doing nothing today (aside from the mound of laundry…).  I’m running tomorrow while Spud’s at playschool.  It’ll probably only be for about an hour, but it will be my first outside run in a very long time.  Should be interesting.

3.  I am losing my mind and doing exceptionally stupid things.  I know that hydrating isn’t stupid.  But it is when you try to do it on auto-pilot.  Here’s the story; feel free to laugh.  Or be disgusted.  We have two Halo 3 Slurpee cups that we use fairly regularly.  Not sure why we kept them other than they’re big.  Whenever I drink water, which admittedly isn’t as often as it should be, I’ll use one of the cups.  They’re 22oz and since they’re blue plastic I convince myself that I’m somehow not drinking water.  Anyways, they weren’t in the cupboard so I pulled one out of the dishwasher, popped in a Kona Cola Nuun, poured the water, and carried it to the bedroom to drink while I attacked the aforementioned laundry.  Since the drink is brown I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.  Unfortunately I noticed a kind of sludge on the inside of the cup when I was about 3/4 of the way through.  I thought, “that’s weird, Nuun doesn’t usually leave much residue.”  And then it hit me.  The dishwasher had not been run.  What I was drinking was Kona Cola Nuun with the reconstituted remains of Colin’s banana-pineapple smoothie from the night before.  I gagged a little, wondered if I was going to poison myself since it had dairy in it, and then thought, “meh, at least I had about 2 cups of water.”  No, I did not finish the Nuun once I realized my mistake.  That would be gross.

4.  I am starting to get paranoid about getting sick.  My allergies (along with a glass of wine) made me think that I was coming down with the plague on Saturday.  Thankfully I felt much better on Sunday.  It’s going to be a long week since I take Spud to his drop in playschool program every day…

5.  Nightmares: haven’t had any yet, but they’ve made an appearance every training cycle so far so I’m not expecting anything different this time around.

Any “Taper Crazies” I’m missing?  

Can anyone top the drink story?  Colin’s comes close: he poured a glass of milk and couldn’t figure out why it kept getting sweeter the more he drank.  Turns out he used the cup he’d already made powdered iced tea in.  Ugh.