Holy 21.5 miles batman

Thank goodness the long runs are finally over. I don't think I've ever been as excited to start my taper as I am this time around. This morning I had 20 miles scheduled, but I ran with Laura, Tiffany, and Sam...who had 22 miles scheduled. I figured what the heck, it was only two miles, so I went ahead and shot for the 22. We actually ended up a little short at 21.5, but that's close enough in my world. I'll just run an extra 1/2 mile tomorrow.
We came to the consensus today that we're all just tired of running, and Laura is already injured (hopefully, she'll be getting a cortisone injection this week to manage her pain for the next three weeks), so we made the decision to lay off a little on this run. We slowed our pace down a full sixty to ninety seconds for each mile. Of course, by the time we finished we were all feeling a little tired, but overall pretty good. We did have quite a discussion as to exactly who's brilliant idea it was to do 22 miles instead of 20. When we hit the 20 mile mark all of us thought about just calling it a day, but we figured that we'd still have to get back to Tiffany's house, and the quickest way to get there was to keep running.
Today's weather for the run was pretty much perfect. It was cold and rainy when we started out, then it poured about six miles into it for about ten minutes, then it was cloudy and cool the rest of the run. The course we ran was a modification of the one that we ran several weeks ago. None of us really like running courses that are out and back, so we managed to map out a large circle-ish route that took us on the scenic tour of Clayton, Forest Park, and the Delmar Loop areas. There were a lot of people out.
Despite the fact that we almost got run over during the last two miles by a woman making a right turn against the light and not bothering to check the crosswalk first. Sam, being as vocal as she is, started yelling at the woman about paying attention and pedestrians having the right of way...too funny.
All in all, today was a good run, but I'm glad to have it over and finally be working on the taper. I'm starting to get pretty pumped about Chicago. I just need to head out and buy some new running shoes for the big day.