ON TO THE TAPER! Plus, my new Rudy Project sunglasses, and my boyfriend's trail mix!

YEE HAW. The crux of the training is OVER. Now I can sit back and chillax while I finish these last three weeks of tapering. I'm glad to get the hard weeks over to be honest. It wasn't injury inducing *knocks on wood* but I was definitely pushing my body more than it was used to.

This weekend I completed a marathon. I sneaked out of the house at 6am, an hour and a half before sunrise. It was so dark that my head had both a headlamp and sunglasses on my visor. I bet I looked like a real winner. I was perplexed when I saw that the trails had a couple of morning birds out there doing their walks and runs.

Eventually the sun came up. I really love seeing the sun rise in a new setting, so it was cool to see the San Mateo Bridge all lit up. If you haven't run at night, I think you should give it a go. It is sort of invigorating to have such a change in environment.

It was a long run but honestly, it wasn't too bad. The last six miles that I usually dread and slog through were not shabby at all! I finished with an average of 10:28, and an avg hr of 153. I only needed one gu, and kept my water pack filled with two tabs of NUUN. Yesterday, the Chocolate Outrage Gu was on the menu. It was DE-licious. I actually had a small portion of the Pocket Fuels Chocolate Expresso which grossed me out. It was like they ground up a bunch of coffee beans and mixed it with a small amount of chocolate hazelnut butter. The texture was unappetizing and left my mouth really dry. For the amount of effort that goes into mixing those packets, I'm kind of leaning away from them and would rather just have a packet of Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter instead.

Oh and I wore my new Injinji Compression socks! They seemed to work at keeping my worrisome pinky toe blister at bay, but I'm afraid they cramp up the toebox of my shoes now. I'm not sure if I should risk it. They were nice though. A great material and decent compression to them. I was pleasantly surprised!

My other runs weren't memorable enough to talk too much about. It was a bit of a rough week, I think I was still getting over the 50k from two weeks ago. I still averaged my runs between a 10:00min/mi and a 10:30 min/mi so I was happy with that. Even today's run was strangely fast considering how I felt. As my legs warmed up and got comfortable I kept getting faster. It was almost a negative split 10 mile run.

In other news, I got some new sunglasses. These are the Rudy Project Stratofly SX's. I got the Photochromic Clear lenses. I wasn't sure if I liked them at first because the lenses didn't get as dark as I was used to, but now that I've used them in some pretty strong sun I think it's sufficient. It's nice to have them transition since I run from dark to light. They are comfortable, don't fog and don't bounce. I wanted to splurge on some nice sunglasses because my old ones were cheapo's from a race expo. They felt okay but were ill fitting for my tiny asian face, with my almost complete lack of nose bridge. These are great because the nose piece is adjustable. 

Last, I wanted to mention my boyfriend's AH-MAZING trail mix he has whipped together for our lower carb lifestyles. He also got tired of me picking out all the good stuff and leaving him nothing but sunflower seeds, cranberries, and raisins. He doesn't have a specific recipe, but this combination of hazelnuts, walnuts, toasted coconut shavings, 72% dark chocolate, and beef jerky is just heavenly.

Oh and before I forget, be sure to like my FB page to get random running updates and photos. The posts and photos will be kept mostly different from the FB page to keep it somewhat interesting.