 That's right, everyone. Another day, another run, and yes, today's an easy run. Let the taper begin. I'll give you my thoughts on strategy when it comes to tapering, especially dropping off of high volume and how that changes things and also adding in a lot of vertical as well. So that's where I'm off to right now. Get this six mile easy day in. Did I already mention that? But before that, we're going to the post office, picking up more. I'm sure there's going to be quite a few shoe boxes waiting there for the next giveaway. And I'm not going to give you a date until we really nail this down, figure out the technical issues that are popping up along with these slow Wi-Fi. So anyway, we're working on it. It's going to happen. We don't give up on this channel, right? We do not give up, but I'm not going to give you a date, but I am going to go check the PO box because I have a feeling, I haven't checked in probably five days, so I have a feeling there's quite a bit happening there. All right, onward and upward. Love you all. Oh man, taper, taper time. I love it. I love that. Oh no, they're open. Yeah, yeah. And away we go, final run in. Oh man, that escalated quickly. Final run and the new balance of fuel cell rebels. There it is. Today's run will take us over 50 miles. So we will be getting the second video publishing today. First, no, sorry. Full review of the fuel cell rebels. So pretty exciting day. And like I said, that escalated quickly. And one quick little note for you all about the fuel cell rebel. You might have to stick a little bit of super glue between the insole and the bottom of the shoe on the inside, that inside cavity because the insole did slide backward yesterday. Remember I had to outrun a lightning and thunderstorm. And so the inside became just a little slick. So just anyway, if you live in an area that it gets a lot of rain, just keep that in mind. Again, it very rarely happens to me, but it did happen yesterday. So anyway, all right, lacing up here. There we go everyone. All right, you better believe it. Taper, keyword taper. And that question of the day, I guess first of all, six miles, 10K, about 930 a mile. Okay, so nice and easy. That is definitely my recovery pace, especially during high volume times. When you start getting tired, it's just so good to go slow and go on a soft surface like this grass soccer field behind me. So anyway, 930 a mile. Oh man, here's the kilometer pace. All right, there's that kilometer pace for all of you and I'll continue to strive to put that kilometer pace in addition to the mile pace. I just don't always remember. Okay, question of the day. And we've talked about this before. I don't know if you remember three or four months ago before the cookie chase 5K. We talked about tapering and but there's so many. I mean, there's probably, I don't know, 10,000 new people subscribed. So I know we can get an even better conversation going down below in the comments about tapering. And yes, do you taper before your peak races? If so, how far out do you usually start and does it change depending on the distance of the race, all right? So I will dive much deeper into that topic back to the studio. Got it done, feeling good, feeling better. All that pool just floating around 10, 15 minutes kicking the legs like that without a care in the world. All right, back to the house, back to the studio, breaking down this tapering. Let's go. And here we go. All right, before talking about tapering, I do just want to open a few things real quick. First of all, a shout out to Cindy. Thank you, Cindy. She sent me these gators for basically to help keep rocks and gravel out of your shoes when you're running on big mountains with a lot of gravel or a lot of loose rocks. And she says, for the sandy ascent of Pike's Peak to discourage the entry of foreign objects into your socks and shoes hitchhiking a ride. So anyway, thank you, Cindy, for the, and she, of course, nailed the color outdoor research gators. I love it, I love it. I will be putting these to use up in the 14ers very soon. Okay, and then, okay, this is shoes. Okay, this is awesome. I hope you can find some deserving people to put these shoes to good use. I really enjoy your upbeat and positive nature. Keep up the amazing work, Thomas. Okay, so this is, I thought this was a box from Territory, no, this is just, this is better. This is running shoes for the next giveaway. Oh my goodness, Solomon's, Solomon's, Solomon's. Thomas, I promise. I will find a good home for these shoes. Thank you for your patience, everyone. I'm not gonna announce the next giveaway. We will make it happen. Oh my goodness. And then he lists the mileage. Oh, that's amazing. So one of the, so there's four pairs of shoes, 24 miles, 10 miles, 27 miles, and brand new. That's what I'm talking about. So for these running shoe giveaways, I prefer that the running shoes have less than 30 miles. And so, Thomas, you nailed it, gently used. And I consider under 30 miles gently used, just so that we're sending shoes to folks that have a lot of life left in them. And so the question becomes, what is tapering? And the very simple, and we could go into a lot more detail, but the very simple definition is the reduction in volume of your training leading up to a race. All right, that's a very basic, basic definition of tapering. And you could also add in the reduction of intensity, especially the last three to four days before a race, especially a peak race. And the old running adage or saying that I repeat to myself the last three weeks of a training block, even before that, but especially the last three weeks is, I'm striving to arrive at the starting line as fit as possible and as fresh as possible, okay? So you want to arrive, again, as fit as possible and as fresh as possible at the starting line. It's all about, as I say so often, walking the line in our training and especially in those last three weeks when we need to be fresh. We want to be fat. We don't want, you don't want tired legs on the starting line. Like that's one of the worst. In fact, at the rendezvous, even though, even though I ended up winning the race on Saturday at the rendezvous mountain hill climb, my legs were not as fresh as possible. I was basically training through that race, but I don't want to feel like that for the Pikes Peak Ascent in three weeks. And because, well, a lot of different reasons, but one of them is that the competition at Pikes Peak is going to be 10-fold. Well, not 10-fold. It's going to be at least three-fold compared to the rendezvous mountain hill climb. We're talking some of the best uphill mountain runners in the United States. And I'm guessing even around the world, I don't know all of the entrance for the race, but I want to be as fresh as possible for Pikes Peak. Now the timeline for my tapering leading into a big peak race, and there's a lot of different factors that play into this, but is usually three weeks. And a couple people were questioning that methodology, and that's okay. Thank you for bringing up thoughts and questions and concerns about what I'm doing in my training. I'm not afraid to field those questions. And these questions were coming in on Strava, here on YouTube, and let me just explain why three weeks. So basically, I've had a reduced training block because of the injury, and I ramped up quickly. I don't know if you've noticed, but I hit 100 miles the last two weeks, 100 miles. So I've run 200 miles in the last two weeks, which is a lot. But what is even more important and more critical to this training block is the vertical gain. So I've gained about, it's been about 40,000 feet of vertical gain in the last two weeks. And that is why I'm beginning my taper now because that is a lot. Like, I don't know if you've ever run more than 10,000 feet in a week, but it'll add up in your legs, and you will begin to feel it. And so therefore, this upcoming week, I'm not gonna reduce my vertical gain quite yet. That'll be next week. But I am gonna begin to reduce the volume. And so what happens is the volume comes down and the speed work goes up. Now, ideally I would have started this, let's say five weeks out. But frankly, two weeks ago, I was still building up and trying to build an aerobic base first. You guys know like my theory and my strategy for building an aerobic base before adding speed work into a training block. So two weeks ago, I was like boom, boom, boom, aerobic base, aerobic engine. But now in the next basically 10 to 12 days, it's time to start going in aerobic just a little bit or as much as I can up in the mountains, leading into, so three weeks out, I reduce about 15 to 20% and then 10 to 12 days out. So that's the next drop. So that'll be basically eight days from now. I'll reduce again another 20 to 30%. And then the sweet spot for me to really make sure my legs are happy on the starting line is, so if the race is on Saturday, the Pike's Peak Ascent, I always really reduce my volume three to four days out. So that's Friday, Thursday, Wednesday and possibly Tuesday, depending of course, going by feel, it's all about feel in my training. So listening to the body, listening to the legs. So that'll be the, so it's basically a three step reduction, three weeks out and listen, like I started 19 days out. So today, so almost three weeks, but because of the race on Saturday, I didn't really, I didn't consider that a taper. So three weeks out, 10 to 12 days out, three to four days out. That is my three step tapering process leading in to a peak race, all right? So I know that was so, okay, here's the deal. We're closing out the blog. Thanks for sticking with me on that. If you wanna go deeper into tapering, the videos on the screen right now, you can click on those and I talk more about tapering as well as building a training block, how I go about building my training blocks. I think you will appreciate those blogs. All right, with that said, I appreciate you guys being here. Seek beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.