I can do it!

So this is my "official" taper week...yeah, right.

Seriously, I'm going to do it. On Wednesday. Maybe I'll regret it. We shall see.  :D

I got up early to do a 40 minute run, but it turned into a 43:28 run.  I did 4.8 miles, and felt pretty excited when I did the math and realized that if I had run a full 5-miler, I would have come in just over 45 minutes - which cuts at least 3 to 4 minutes off my standard 5 mile time!  Wow, those HIITs really DO make you faster!  I was even taking it easy, thinking about tapering and all.

After the run, I went to bootcamp training, where luckily today was a stretch day.  So we did some yoga on the top of a huge rock overlooking Saint George.  It was beautiful, and exactly what I needed.

After bootcamp, I needed to get my bike ride in, so my friend Kim met me for an hour of easy spinning on a local trail.  We did 15.6 miles in 1:01:58.

To wrap it all up, I went to the pool this evening and swam 80 lengths, nice and slowly.  I really tried to focus on my technique...what little I know of it.  Ben said I looked like I was gliding, and I guess that's a good thing.

I had planned to do a swim, bike, and run today, but the weather didn't cooperate, so we had to skip the lake.  I did a little bit of interval work on the treadmill...1 mile warm-up at 5.0 - 7.5 MPH in 10:04, then walked for 2 minutes.  After that I did two intervals, starting at 6.5 and increasing a full MPH every minute until 9.5 the first time and 10.5 the second time.  All together, I did 2.5 miles in 22:43.

Then tonight, since the lake trip was cancelled, I went to an hour Zumba class and an hour Yoga class.  Funny how that feels like tapering after the workouts all the I've been doing this last week.  :D

Guess what?!?  I'm tapering!!!  Hahahaha!

I haven't done a single form of exercise today.  And I don't think I'm going to, at all!  BUT I DID get some pics taken for my post-18-week-challenge, and also got myself a Body Composition Analysis in a Bod Pod...pretty cool.  So since the first of the year, my weight has gone from 126.6 down to 121-ish and up to 131-ish and now back to 124.2 as of this morning.  But my bodyfat % has dropped from 23.8% down to 18.2%...not bad!  I've noticed that I've added several pounds of muscle mass and I'm feeling like this may be a good, healthy weight for me to be doing all the endurance training I'm doing.  Much lower and I start to starve.  I'm going to play with it more as I progress in my training.  I love the scientific experiment that is ME.  Hahaha!

This evening, I made it through a half-hour of yoga, but I was feeling really light-headed and dizzy, so I decided I would go out to the car and wait for Ben.  During the half-hour I was out there, I fell asleep FIVE times and woke myself up!!!  No wonder I'm sleep deprived.  I think I'm going to go visit a sleep clinic....

Ogden Marathon!!!

We were pretty worried when we pulled into Ogden yesterday afternoon, and it was raining and hailing!  The weather forecast had said that it would clear up by Wednesday, but two days later, it was still bad!  But it turned out to be a beautiful morning.  They bussed us up the canyon at 4:45 am, even though the race didn't start until 7:00 - not sure why.  It was much warmer than we had anticipated, even though the skies were clear.  We waited by fire pits in the middle of some farmer's field, so we had to be careful about the "cow pies."  The course was absolutely spectacular, especially coming down by pine view lake.  Even though the course was advertised as downhill, there were some rollers and one small-ish uphill section that took me by surprise.  I felt absolutely FANTASTIC for the first half of the run, and was trying to carefully pace myself so that I would have plenty of energy and strength to finish strong.  I felt certain that I would be able to come across the finish line easily under four hours.  But at mile 18, my legs quit!  It was strangely reminiscent of the Mesquite Marathon!  What a bummer.  Mile 18 was where we hit the steepest of the downhill section of the canyon, and all I could do was shuffle along to the finish line.  I'm not sure what went wrong.  Both of my soleus muscles locked completely up, and my bad foot was cramped.  Other than that, my energy levels felt great, and the rest of my legs were fine.  But I could NOT get more than a shuffle out of my legs.  So....I crossed the finish line at 4:07 - enough for a new PR for me, but far worse than I had anticipated.  My garmin said I did 26.46 in 4:07:32, but my chip said 4:07:15.  I placed 900 out of 2137 total, 301 out of 951 women, and 93rd in my division of 230.  I would really like to do this race again, and hopefully figure out what went wrong, so I can remedy it!