It's the most wonderful time of marathon training!

Everybody sing with me!

It's the most wonderful time of marathon training!
With the toe blisters healing
and leg muscles feeling
hardly any straining,
It's the most wonderful time of marathon training!

It's the hap-happiest three weeks of all!
I can sleep in on Sundays
and enjoy my long run days
without hitting the wall!
It's the hap-happiest three weeks of all!!!!

Yes, indeedy, folks! It's that most wonderful time of marathon training: TAPER TIME! I'm happy about it now because this is the first week of it. I know I'll probably start to go mad in a week or so... but it's good to enjoy the taper while I still have my sanity.

Coach Brad has given Kristi and me quite a reprieve already, and for that we are thankful. You should see the workout the regular Black Group members had to do last night! Allow me to show you:

1 mile warm-up
3 x 2 miles with 5 minutes rest between
1 mile cooldown

Now, I'm no mathematician (or mathmagician, as fellow FASTie, Jose says), but that looks like it adds up to 8 miles. EIGHT MILES! If I had been expected to do that workout, I would have been there until midnight trying to get all that done.

Fortunately, Kristi and I got a special workout designed just for us. See?



We were doing the Happy Taper Dance of Joy (yes, that's a real dance!) that we didn't have to do the Black Group workout. Instead, our workout ended up being just shy of 6 miles and it was a plenty good workout, thankyouverymuch. As you can see, we had some ab work thrown in there as well, and Coach Maggie didn't give us any breaks on that. Apparently tapering does not extend to core work. Hmph!

In order to thank Coach Brad for his kindness and generosity in allowing us to taper, Kristi and I would like to present him with a token of our appreciation:


Coach Maggie still made us do the same crazy dynamic warm-up and core work as everyone else, so she does not get any Rolos. Sorry, Maggie! But it's not too late to redeem yourself - we still have two more weeks of taper left! *waves Rolos under Maggie's nose*

Peace. Love. Train.