It seems so unfair.
Just as you reach peak fitness and weather conditions become deliciously crisp for running, the taper looms, and your training plan tells you to cool it: run less, run slower.
Studies have proven that backing off mileage and intensity will help you adapt to the stresses of training and go faster.
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And so you hold back, finishing each workout hungry for more but trusting the sacred teaching of the taper: less is best. After all, you’ve invested months of your life and sacrificed hours of sleep, gallons of sweat, and servings of ice cream in pursuit of this goal. You don’t want to blow it now!
But what’s one to do with all this unspent energy? If you depend on your daily run to light up your brain, open your heart, and generally take the edge off, you could find yourself with an uncomfortable abundance of anxious energy--your mind drawn magnetically to doubts about the training you’ve done and nightmares about worst-case race-day scenarios.
I urge you to use the playlist below, which has helped me get the lead out during these trying times. Blast it while you visualize yourself crossing the finish line with your fists pumping, knowing that you gave it all that you had.
1. Baba O’Riley – The Who
2. Let My Love Open the Door – Pete Townsend
3. Hung Up – Madonna
4. Code Name Vivaldi – The Piano Guys
5. Mambo No. 5 – Lou Bega
6. I’d Run Away – The Jayhawks
7. Gone – Kanye West
8. Lazy Eye – Silversun Pickups
9. State of Love and Trust – Pearl Jam
10. Two Step – Dave Matthews Band
11. I Believe in a Thing Called Love – The Darkness
12. Tubthumping - Chumbawumba
13. Fall on Me - R.E.M.
