Taper, here I come!!! (the edited version....)

20 miles. 20 minutes better than last year! It was humid, and warm in the second half. At mile 14, I institued the "run 2 songs, walk 1" pacing method, which worked well. I feel good - a little tired, but that may have more to do with getting up at 4:45 am.

So, a 20 miler and I'm not joking, 3 different times, someone stopped to ask me questions. I'm turning into my mother (no, Mom, of course thats NOT bad!) - peopel talk to her all the time. No joke. It wasn't other runners - none of us felt like talking - it was people just walking by:

Number 1 "what are you running for?" Me.."training run for the Chicago marathon". Her "oh, how nice!" Yeah, it's a hoot.

Number 2 "how long is the race, a 10K?" (this is just past mile 10). Me "no, its a 20 mile training run"....but I was thinking "dear god, I wish is was a 10K, I would have been done 4 miles ago).

Number 3 "are you running a race?" Me...."no, training run". This one looked at me funny, probably because we all had numbers on our chests. Whatever, it was hot, I was somewhere around mile 14 and I didn't like chatting.

I'm not sure why those people picked me to talk to. This is why I normally wear sunglasses. No eye contact. I didn't have them on yesterday because it was supposed to be cloudy. Not so much.

It's funny how fast 20 miles goes by. I don't know if it's because I was just in the zone or what, but 3 hrs and 55 min really did fly by. I think this is a good thing, because I never really felt like I wanted to die, and that's a huge plus.

Thanks to Juj for coming down with me and thanks to all the great volunteers on the course.

It is now time to taper. All through marathon training, you look foward to the taper. Now that it's here, you start to wonder "did I do enough, did I push myself hard enough, should I have kept up that crosstraining, should I have gone faster" It is a total mind game. Personally, I know I'm doing better than last year, and am pretty confident in what I've done so far.

Please, please weather gods..I am begging for 55, no humidity and cloudy on October 12th. Please.