TAPER TIME BABY!

I did it! I ran 20 miles today, and now I'm officially tapering until the marathon on the 25th.

The first 10 miles today went exceptionally well. I was actually surprised how good I felt at the half way point, when I stopped at home for a little relief and a refill of my fluids.

I took a look at my Garmin at mile 13.1, and the time was exactly 2:30, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to finish the full marathon in 5 hours. Of course, at about mile 14 the wheels started coming off, and I just ran out of gas. Still, I was able to finish 20 miles in only about 8 minutes more than my 18 miler about a month ago, which was a nice improvement. I was trying to average 11:31/mile today, and ended up averaging 11:47, so all in all it went pretty well for the longest run of my life to date.

Some notes on my hydration and nutrition today: I bought a new Nathan hydration belt, which was a Godsend today. My old Fuel Belt holds 2 eight ounce bottles, which just wasn't enough for a run leg of 8 or more miles. The new belt holds 4 ten ounce bottles, and I filled all of them twice for today's run, and drank all of it. For each leg, I filled two with Gatorade Endurance, but put in only 2/3 of the powder called for on the can because I'm trying to keep my sodium down a little due to my wonderful new disease. I filled the other two with water. I also ate a gel packet before the run and then one every 40 minutes until I polished off the 3 that I was carrying. Then I switched to Cliff Shot Blocks and ate 3 blocks every 40 minutes until they were gone. I even polished off a bag of sport beans during the last couple of miles. I still felt like I ran out of gas at mile 14, so I'm probably going to carry more nutrition on race day just to be sure.

For some reason, everything I put in my mouth started tasting like crap after about 14 miles too, which was something new for me. Even the filtered water tasted horrible. I had a bit of a craving for Coke, so I'm thinking I might wear my belt on race day, and fill the bottles with Coke. We'll see. I know there are 19 water stops and that they offer water, Gatorade Endurance and Gu, but I don't know if they offer Coke.

Today was huge for me. I'm again hopeful that things will go well on race day. This week, my plan calls for an 8 mile interval run and a 12 mile long run. The week after that, I have a 6 mile tempo run and a 8 mile long run. Then, the week of the race, I have a 2 mile easy run, a 5 mile tempo run, and another 2 mile easy run. I've never done a taper before, so the next few weeks should be interesting.

Feel free to post any advice about what I should be eating for the next few weeks so I don't gain 20 pounds before race day!