Have a nice trip and see you next fall!

I've been thinking of running the Five Points of Life Gainesville Marathon, and this week is the start of my race taper. For those of you not in the know, before a race it is adviseable to reduce the amount of your training so you feel refreshed and 100% for an important race. For the marathon, I like to reduce the amount of miles I run starting about 2 weeks before the marathon. The first week I plan to run about 70% of the miles I was running before, and then the second week maybe about 45%. One side effect of cutting back on the miles is what is termed "taper madness". Because you aren't running nearly as much as you are used to, you start getting a little stir-crazy. You have a lot more energy because you aren't using it up in your running, so it kinda makes you go a little mad.

Anyhow, so tonight's run was a nice and easy 6 miler in the cool rain. Just the other day I was looking at the shoes I planned to wear tonight and saw they were getting kinda old. Some of the rubber on the outsole of the shoe was pretty worn down. During tonight's run I came to an intersection where two cars were at a stop sign and went to run behind the first and in front of the second. To do that, I had to jump up a curb at the corner and then down off the curb. Well, when I hit the road with my foot it must've hit a slick spot as I lost my balance and started to fall. Luckily the 2nd car was still fully stopped as I utilized my karate training from when I was a kid to properly roll into the fall and avoid any serious injury! Thank you Mom for making me take that one summer of karate! I managed to escape with just one slight scrape near my right elbow and some stinging hands which look and feel perfectly fine right now. My right leg was semi-gimpy when I rolled up out of the fall, but I just kept on running. It feels just the teeniest bit stiff right now, but I'll take it easy tonight and rest instead of doing a planned strength training workout.

The rest of tonight's run was fairly uneventful except for the heavier rain that started to fall out of the sky soon after my tumbleweed impression. It's always a nice change of pace to run in the rain no matter how wet my socks get. Well, I better get out of these wet clothes and into a nice hot shower. More to come later on the subject of running shoes...