One Week, One Ankle, One Plantar, One dozen weather opinions

One week to go.

1) I'm in full taper mode having run 7 miles yesterday.
Wikipedia says:

As a general rule of thumb, longer endurance events are generally preceded by longer tapering periods, with the curious exception of particularly long endurance competitons, such as ultramarathons and multiday races.

Typically, tapering for relatively short endurance events takes as little as a week or less, but tapering for an event like the marathon takes at least two or three weeks. Bob Cooper, a veteran marathoner and contributing editor for Runner's World, points to medical studies as evidence that the final three weeks of any marathon-training program are the most critical stage of training; a review of fifty studies on tapering indicates that optimal levels of muscle glycogen, enzymes, antioxidants, and hormones, which are significantly depleted by intense endurance training, are achieved during a taper.

Today I have 3 miles on the calendar, but I'm going to skip it due to point number 2. I'm feeling much more calm than I did the weeks leading up to Austin in February. Mostly because now "I've been there before", and I know the hell that lies ahead. It'a good hell though. A hell I lookk forward to. As I enter my last week of preparations, the phantom pains in my hamstring has disappeared, but the unfortunately, the ankle pains, and plantars are very much part of reality.

2) As I mentioned on my blog earlier, my Plantar Fasciitis pains are back in full force on my left foot. So you can follow along at home, I've shaded in blue the areas that hurt the most. (The darker the shade, the more the hurt.)
What am I doing about it? I went to see Dr. Laurie on Tuesday, Thursday, and again yesterday (Saturday). Yesterday after my little 7 miler, the pains were really bad, but not only on the bottom of the foot, also on the outside/lower ankle. I've had that pain for about a week as well. Laurie thinks it's an ankle sprain, and I'm starting to agree with her. At first I just thought it was really bad Plantars, but now that she brought it up, it feels exactly like my ankle used to feel during my soccer days. How fun! I'm not going to not run due to a slight lower ankle sprain and plantars.