So, I was watching the hockey game last night (L.A. Kings (yea!) 6-0 plastering of the Columbus Blue Jackets), when all of a sudden, Marathon (my new pet) jumped up and made a beeline for the underbrush. Something had spooked the crap out of him. Poor fellow.

Here’s the deal. The Los Angeles Marathon sent their official “Final Race Instructions” email. Anyone who has not grown up or lived in L.A. for a while might be a little intimidated. Some of the gems:

• “You must wear your Bib on the front of your shirt and leave the B-Tag attached to your bib.

Okay – I made it to week 2. Some of the things that I will be thinking about and doing this week:

• Taking it eas(ier): I’ll be maintaining intensity but cutting back on volume.  Last night I pulled off 6 miles at an average pace of 9:28. My longest run will be this weekend at 8 miles. Nothing else over 6 for the week. Sunday’s run will be in the two mile range. I could get used to this.
• Eating: I’ll be putting a little greater emphasis on carbs this week. But – I’m not going overboard!

Once again I have insomnia but I swear I heard something that woke me up at 1:30am and now I can’t get back to sleep.
I am struggling with the whole blog thing. Since I consistently (and some would say constantly) do Twitter and Facebook for Ingles Markets it seems to be just one more layer of busyness that I might not need to add. Yet it also occurs to me that within blogging I would be able to write more than just those 140 characters in the Twitter block.

I have a new commitment for my efforts to lose weight. Rather than grab munchies when I am feeling stressed out, I am going to try to go play a round of Wii tennis. I have a bag of oranges on hand for when that is not possible, but so far I have managed to play tennis with reasonable success when I am getting stressed out. We’ll see how it is working when I find where my bathroom scale vanished to back around Thanksgiving.

Life sometimes has a way of conspiring with our wishes and desires to make things happen. Such was my day yesterday. I needed to (well maybe not *needed*, but definitely *should have*) hit the trails for a 6 mile run. But, one thing led to another led to another, and before I knew it, it was late in the day. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here before, but one of the things I do to keep the peace in the Jones household is cook dinner on the weekends. (It’s not really that bad.

I adopted a pet today. His name is Marathon:

He will be my constant companion for the next three weeks. Some of his endearing qualities:

• Tapirs near a water source will swim, sink to the bottom to allow small fish to pick parasites off their bulky bodies.
• Along with fresh water lounging, tapirs often wallow in mud pits.
• The thick skin on the backs of their necks helps to protect them from threats.
• When threatened, the creatures are able to run fairly quickly, considering their size and cumbersome appearance, and find shelter in the thick undergrowth of the forest or in water.

I think Marathon and I will get along quite well….

Twelve nice and easy miles in the books. My last double digit training run before the Big Day. I took the opportunity to check out a couple things from my list:

• Clothing: Apparently my body is still changing. My favorite marathon shorts (Adidas with built in compression shorts) fits a lot looser that I remember. I had a problem with the shorts riding down on my hips and the compression shorts riding up into my nether regions. I fixed it by cinching the drawstrings a little tighter. Ouch! I need to remember that on race day….
• Fueling on the run: I was able to rip the little top off the Hammer Gels and get them down while moving.

Let’s see. Where do I start. First off, something that Adam (I Am Boring) left in a blog comment yesterday about taper time makes a lot of sense:

“…most people will say to keep the same intensity (speed) as before just reduce the volume. I like that a lot - keep you legs moving at the same speeds that they are used to.”

That makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. I mean it takes doing something for 20 days to make it habit, right? Can you forget a habit by *not* doing it for 20 days? 21 day taper?

Less than 20 days until The Day. March 21st. That means the bane of most marathoners has begun - taper. Most of us hear about “taper madness” - that time where we are told by our training plans to run less to prepare for running more. It seems counter intuitive. It’s tough to cut a run short at 6 miles when you used to run 10. Most of you have been there before. And even though this is my third time, I’ve got to admit this whole taper thing is still a bit of a mystery.

I spent some time yesterday researching the value of the taper.

I got out for my planned six miler late in the afternoon yesterday. I was pretty sneaky. The wind was blowing onshore (happens a lot in the afternoon as the rising air over the land draws the cooler air off the ocean). In my earlier days I would have put the miles in. Screw the wind. But demonstrating my higher intelligence (well, okay, the fact that it took me about a year and a half to catch on), I headed up the road so that I would be running the first three miles into the wind, which of course meant that the way back to the car would be with a tailwind.