Except for the race, none of my runs have been too eventful lately.

During the first week of taper, I did two easy interval runs and one harder tempo run, which went okay except for the humidity.

In the week leading up to the race, I did one steady 3 miler (no walking) and what I called a mental prep run. In this run, I purposely made it super hard to try to prepare my mind for the last few miles of the half. This involved running as fast as I could without warming up, which gave me a side stitch that I then had to to deal with for the rest of the time. It also involved running up a hill as fast as I could. Oh, and did I mention I hadn’t slept well the night before, drank any water all day, or taken my asthma medication in several days? I made it two miles, which is pretty good considering I felt like I wanted to die about half a mile in. Maybe this is why the half seemed like such a breeze a few days later.

Recovery has been going well. My first run was on Wednesday, and I made it 1.5 miles before I felt like I needed to take a walk break (my legs were pretty stiff!). My next run, I made it 2 miles, and by Sunday, I was able to run 3.5 miles straight through (and sped up each mile).

I’m currently not on a training plan and have no races on the calendar for months, so it’s the first time (ever) I don’t have anything directly motivating me to run. We will see how this goes!