Rochester Half Marathon Recap

I ran the Rochester Half Marathon last weekend - my second Half Marathon of the year. When I ran the Shoreline Half Marathon in Hamlin, NY in July, I wasn't really adequately trained to "race" it, so I used it like a long training run, with convenient water and refueling stops along the way. My time was 2:27.

But going into the Rochester Half Marathon I felt great. I had been training well and my legs were fresh. I mapped out a strategy to finish around 2:10 (a stretch goal), with a more conservative goal of beating 2:15. The course is relatively flat, but there are some hills in the early miles. I charted out my goal pace for each mile, allowing a little more time for the uphill portions, and a little less time for the downhill and flatter sections.

On Tapering

I was reading the Wall Street Journal over breakfast this morning when an article about the term "tapering" caught my eye.

In the week or two (or three) before a long distance race, most training plans call for a "taper." Weekly and daily mileage is slowly reduced over the days leading up to the race. This helps avoid injury and keeps your body and legs fresh to enable a maximum effort on race day.

The article in the WSJ refers to the use of "taper" as a description of the Federal Reserve's actions to reduce the monetary stimulus that has been in place since the Great Recession. But what I found most interesting was the origin of the word itself:

Final Long Run Before Rochester Half Marathon

I finished my final long run before next weekend's Rochester Half Marathon in pretty good shape. I ran  pretty steady at about 10 minutes/mile, with a couple of miles at a slightly faster "race" pace. The route took me on the Erie Canal Path from Bushnell's Basin northwest through the village of Pittsford and into Henrietta.

It was cool to start, with temperatures around 50, but I pretty quickly regretted my choice of a long sleeved shirt. I was also in need of a tissue was was annoying. Halfway through I took a GU, which I had never tried before. I bought it mistakenly, thinking it was the brand used by runDisney, and wanting to try it out. But runDisney actually uses Clif brand. Anyway, the Peanut Butter GU was actually pretty tasty and presumably helped me power through the second half of my run.