Oak,
How much longer until the race? Three weeks or so? When would you normally start your taper?

We drove north today to get some bigger hills. We have not made the trip since Dec, right before the great hamstring debacle of 2016. I was a bit worried given my barfy status last w/e and the state of my quads this week post race, so I took an extra recovery day.

There really is no easy way to start your trail run at this park, it is either up and to the right, or up and to the left. So we opted today to start at a neighboring park and run those trails and then a short road stretch and then into our intended destination. That way we had a bit more of a warm up and some extra mileage.

We got in 11 miles total, and about 1200 feet of climbing, so mission accomplished. My goal today was to just run easy, walk the big climbs and pace myself. At about 2 miles in my legs said, no thanks, we do not want to do this today and my stomach felt gross. So I kept it to a trudge. About 1/2 way through my stomach settled. No help for the quads, they hurt on all the downhills and made my knees barky. But I blocked it all out and got through. And here is the crazy thing. I walked all the big hills and felt awful for 9 of 11 miles and my pace was the same as the last time I ran there, when we only ran 8 miles, I felt great and ran all of the hills.

Go figure. There is something to be said for trudging. So I will draw on this day when things get tough at North Face, cuz it was not fun today. Today put the work in workout. But I did meet lots of nice folks out with their canine friends and saw some mt bike folks that I know, so that was fun.