Taper Time!

I am feeling pretty good! I made it through my marathon training (for the most part). I did ALL my long runs this year (Christmas day was the only day that I missed), regardless of the weather. A big Thank You goes out to Cristina, who would not let me quit no matter what the weather was doing. We lucked out this past weekend, and had a great 20 miler. While we missed out on the sunshine of the morning, we did stay dry in the afternoon. We finished up our run in 2:47:24, thanks to Monica who joined us for the middle 6. She was running late, and in a hurry to get home, so we pushed the pace. While I felt ready to be done at 20, I did ask myself mentally if I could do another 10k today. Probably not, but I just felt tired going into the run. I had a big cross training week, and I also was pretty congested. It is awesome to feel myself getting stronger. I felt so much better after this 20 miler than the last, and that one was better than the first. Here is the progression of what I was capable of doing after my 20 mile runs (after a long hot shower, of course)
1st- wanted to crash and didn't leave the house at all that evening, ordered pizza and made Ryan get it.
2nd- didn't want to go anywhere, but didn't want to be a party pooper so I put on makeup and went out to dinner with the family with wet head; Ryan took lead on kid wrangling
3rd- Ryan needed to work on a church talk so I did my makeup & BLEW OUT MY HAIR (this happens maybe 3-4x/month) to take both kids to Pei Wei to bring back take out for us.
Now, I can just enjoy my taper, and hopefully get rested and healthy. I feel really ready for anything with all this crazy weather I trained in. I am glad I have the Cupcake Marathon starting tomorrow to give me something to work on while I taper. It is 26.2 miles total between March 14-28th.