My training plan said to run 10 miles this weekend. At just a week out from the half, I felt like that was a bit much, and planned on doing 7 or 8. It was a busy weekend for us, so after a lot of discussion, we finally decided to get up at 5:30 on Sunday morning to get about 7.5 miles in.
From the moment the alarm went off, things were not good. My right calf muscle immediately cramped. Lovely. About a mile into the run, I stopped to stretch, because my calf was just so tight. I'm not sure how much it helped, but I didn't know what else to do.
About 2 miles in, we hit a big hill--the biggest hill I run on a regular basis. At the steepest point, my husband stopped to walk, while I kept going. I conquer hills. It's one of the things I'm most proud of when it comes to running, because they used to totally kill me. At the top, I stopped for a second to wait for my husband to catch up. And promptly felt ... well, like this. "Vasovagal syncope" is a fancy way to say "sudden drop in blood pressure" which is a somewhat-less-fancy way to say "fainting." Or almost fainting, as was the case on Sunday. This wasn't just a little light-headedness, it was everything but the actual passing out. Yuck. We walked for a little while, but I was still feeling generally yucky after another half-mile or so, so we ended up cutting across our route and just walking home.
So. I ran 2 miles last weekend. Total. Tapering is good and all, but that's a bit extreme. And not helpful to my already freaked-out mental state. I'm trying to convince myself that the 8-miler I ran on Thursday is close enough that I won't have lost all my endurance by Sunday. But rational thought and tapering do not always go hand-in-hand.
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