Chicago

Well, here it is just three days out from Chicago. Come Sunday morning at 8:00 I'll be lined up in corral C and ready to go. It's been a long summer of early mornings, slogging through long runs, painful tempo runs, sore tired legs and plenty of "what was I thinking?" moments. But now it all comes down to 3-4 hours on Sunday morning and then it will be over.

I guess I knew what I was getting into when I signed up last April but still, nothing quite prepared me for long runs in the heat of July and August nor for those 5:30 wake up calls from my alarm watch telling me that sleep time was over and I had to get up and moving.

I guess I'm pretty nervous about the race right now. The taper has been kind of strange. I don't feel like I did a great job with my running, but still I managed to get in a decent amount of mileage generally around 24/week over the last 4 weeks, down from a peak of 41 in week 10 (out of 18 total). Then about a week ago, my legs got this strange soreness that continues to stick around. It's really not soreness, more like the fatigue that I feel late in a long run; it's all up in my hips as kind of feels like almost sharp pain moving longitudinally down my legs. I don't know what to make of that, but I guess it's something I'll have to deal with.

I keep telling myself, "I've put in the training, all that's left to do is relax and enjoy the weekend." If it's not there on race day, there's not much I can do, so just enjoy being in Chicago and the thought that I at least accomplished hard training through the Austin summer.

They have a tracking site setup for the race. If any of my one or two readers were to want to track my progress, they could go to this URL:

http://www.doitsports.com/results/MSG-signup.tcl?sub_event_id=2161

and get updates of my progress along the way.

Right now the weather forecasts are for a low on Sunday morning of around 63 and a high of 78. That's a bit warmer than I would prefer (55 and 68 would be about perfect) but not too bad. I've run the Austin Marathon three times, first was a 3:55 (2003) then a 3:38 (2006) and then a 3:45 (2007). My goal for this race is to hit my Boston qualifying time, which is 3:30. I think that on a good day I should be able to do it, but we'll have to see how Sunday goes.

My race strategy (to the extent that it matters; they're usually out the door in the first few miles for me) is to try to take it easy early on. There will be pace groups, but I'm not going to try to hang with the 3:30 group from the get go. I'm afraid that if I'm out of the gate right at 8:00/mile, that won't be the best strategy. It usually takes my body 20 minutes or so to settle into a rhythm, so if my first few miles are 9:00 or 8:30, I'm not going to worry. But I hope to get to the 10 mile point at no worse than 1:22. The next 10 miles are the "hang on" part of the race. I'd like to be right at 8:00 for these if I can still do that. That would get me to 20 at 2:42 or better. That leaves me 48 minutes for the final 10k to arrive at 3:30. I really don't think that I can go faster than a 48 minute 10 k at that point, and 50 is more reasonable.

The other thing is nutrition. I'm planning to take a GU every 30 minutes, regardless of how I feel. By the end of the race I'll be sick of the sweetness and texture, but it really does help me to keep my legs moving. I'm also hoping that Patty can meet me from time to time along the course and I'm planning to load her up with baggies of pretzels and fig newtons; I know that late in the race I usually really crave something salty and substantial. This will be better nutrition than I've done in my previous marathons, so I hope that it helps.

So there you have it. At a minimum I should have a fun weekend in Chicago with Patty and her sister Missy. That I'm looking forward to. And I will run the race and do my best to enjoy it, regardless of the outcome.