Tapering?

Cedar’s not going to ski today. We walked and she swam Sandy Beach instead. So nice to have a little springy-ness to the light today. 

At spin class this morning, I joked with the instructor, who takes pleasure in our pain, that I was tapering for the upcoming ski with Tim, and was going to take it easy. Her response was that my taper would begin immediately after class.

Just now I looked up the concept of “tapering.” (The sage reader will note the question mark on the title. If I admitted to tapering, full-stop, I would have to be accountable to have actually trained.) The good—and I’m sure well-tapered—folks at Runners’ World suggest one begin tapering three weeks before a big race. The big problem there–due to snow conditions, and the aforementioned punctuation problem–I haven’t really even been training for three weeks. 

My retort to the spin instructor was that I started tapering when I hit 50. And that’s probably true. No more running. Not much hockey, or my joints hurt. Alcohol’s down to every great once in a while. Hiking? Just not too much downhill… Sex? Never mind. You get the point. Aging is its own form of tapering, and one that I have been practicing with a marathoner’s diligence. So I’ll be fine, right?

But wait, a taper is a candle, too. Let me just offer a small flicker of light. Here is my face after the only other ski race I’ve ever done… an 11k. Now imagine it four times as wince—y. Once again, Cedar has the right idea.