Taper madness

I seem to be missing the point of the marathon taper.  Common wisdom is that you do your last really long run (in my case, 20 miles) three weeks before your marathon, which was last week for me and then you start to drastically cut back your milage over the next three weeks so that you're relaxed and well rested for your marathon.

Today I did my long run (also known as LSD - long slow distance) for the week, which for anyone unfamiliar with marathon training, is supposed to be done at a pace 1-1.5 mins slower than your goal marathon pace, in order to get used to how much time you'll be spending running your race.  Since I'm tapering, my run was "only" 12 miles, but I saw fit to run it at an 8 min mile pace, which, if you're counting is at least 1 min faster than my goal race pace.  Ooops!

I also am in a bit of trouble in the "well rested" realm.  This past week I went on a two-night work trip to Indianapolis (the kind where you spend two days on a plane to spend one day at a conference) and this coming week I'm doing the exact same thing in Erie, PA (of 2003 Academic Decathlon nationals fame).  Then, the week leading up to my marathon we're having a major software release at work, which means a lot of testing in the meantime, long hours on the day of the release and a lot of documentation writing and question answering afterwards.  Combined with the 5 hour drive up to Northern California (that's enough to disabuse myself of the idea that the Bay area is Northern CA) for the race, I'm thinking I'll be pretty tired by the time my race starts.

So, to relax a bit, this afternoon we celebrated the uncommonly lovely San Francisco weather with a picnic and reading in the park:

Which quickly devolved into watching very drunk people play a game of kickball that required every player to hold a cup of beer in one hand:

This is what happens when our city gets a little sun.