andy update - OT

[Guest guest]

I was hoping to get down to 155 lbs before my marathon on May 7th and

this morning weighed in at 155.2! I actually thought I'd have to work

hard at it since over the weekend I ate like a pig and hadn't been 155

in a couple months at least. On Sunday, I weighed in at 164 lbs

gaining 7 lbs over the weekend. Now that I'm down to 155, I'm going to

have to work to stay there. Every 1% weight loss can have a

significant effect on my time as long as I don't go much lower than my

ideal running weight.

I'm in taper mode for my marathon as of this week. This is where I

cut back on my running and I'm cutting out weight lifting for 3 weeks

before the marathon.

Everything had been going really well since January with my training

and 2 weeks ago, I had a really crappy long run. It started out

decent for a few miles and then progressively went downhill where my

last 2 miles were 10 min miles. I generally average 7:20 - 8:00

min/mi on my long training runs and run a very consistent pace. This

weekend I had a 20 mile run and it started off at 8 min/mi and I ended

up with some miles as slow as 12:30/mi with my average at 10:45/mi.

Obviously, something is going on.

My legs just felt dead and there was no desire to push. I've

determined that I've overtrained and am aggressively embracing this

taper, taking it to the extreme in hopes that I will come back to my

old running self. It's a really weird feeling to go downhill like

this, but I'm also pretty confident with some rest, I will be stronger

than ever with my running.

Andy