By Kristen Carter

“I am a purple minion and I am going to get you! Nom! Nom! Nom!” No I’m not a two-year-old and I’m not playing with a two-year-old either. I’m a marathoner a week into her taper who’s recently watched Despicable Me 2 and has WAY too much energy.

If you’ve ever run a marathon you have probably experienced what I have come to refer to as the “taper tantrum”: a phenomenon exclusive to runners that occurs when a runner is tapering and has more pent up energy than she knows what to do with.

Symptoms of taper tantrums can include acting like a purple minion or jumping on couches as you fly around your house in your Superhawk cape (ah-hem, Amber Morrison).

The taper tantrum occurs after the marathoner has trained her butt off (or more accurately trained so hard that now she has a bigger butt or in some cases has a butt for the first time) and before she lands in the “freak out stage” of the taper.

The “freak out stage” occurs roughly the 3 to 5 days before race day. You’ve done the heavy lifting during training and have experienced multiple tamper tantrums and now the race is approaching like a giant unavoidable freight train coming straight at you.

During this stage nothing in your body feels right. Your shins hurt, your arches feel weird, you’re positive that the upper right corner of your little toe on your left foot is falling off and will kill you and alas you will not be able to race. There goes your PR. There goes your dream. You surely will die and never run again.

Ironically, 98.64% of the freak out stage occurs internally. Externally the marathoner pretends she doesn’t notice the freight train barreling at her. Race? What race? Oh yea, the race I’ve been training for for the  last year? Yeah… whatever… no big deal. I must have forgotten about it. I am totally cool, calm, and collected.

So now that you know the internal workings of a marathoner during her taper, please just smile and nod when you ask her about her upcoming race and she replies, “Am I ready to race? Of course! I’ve never felt better.”

-Kristen