Taper

I'm running on Saturday, the Kentucky Derby Half Marathon. I could not be more anxious, excited and  optimistic about the race.  I've entered my week of taper and with those 2 and 3 mile runs cone doubt, heavy legs, and mental bartering.  The course is by no means fast and flat.  The exact opposite, actually. I know this taper is essential to my race Saturday, but I'm sluggish and my body misses bouncing life around in my head for about an hour each day.

Like my training taper, I've also entered a teaching taper.  I start spending less time in the classroom and more time in front of a computer typing data, charting growth and reflecting on the past year.  What worked?  What didn't? What can we refine and redo differently?  I know this taper is important and essential to my growth as a teacher and professional, but I also long for being part of something, a community.

This leads me to think that as a parent I enter a taper as well.  If I charted my highs and lows as a parent, this may be one.  Just when work gets a little hectic, the boys sense it and start acting like coked out cows leaving Cuba.  The Beaver Team crumples and turns into mornings and evenings of cat herding.  So I take a step back, away from work, to sit down and eat breakfast or go over homework, build cake towers out of blocks, read books and tell Camp Shaw stories.  It's in these moments of doing life, breathing in that dirty dog smell, that the important rocks make their way to the surface. SO we enjoy the taper and take those extra minutes for what they are...a deep breath for the next swarming of life.