The final countdown

Ahhh, the last week before the race.  The mileage is down and the nerves are starting to pile up.  Today’s run was a whopping 5 miles and will be the longest of the week.   It was the only speed work I’ll do this week.  It consisted of 4 x 1200 m intervals at threshhold pace.  My threshhold pace is 7:15 min/mile and during the warmup mile I was feeling pretty sluggish.  As I crossed the street into the park, though the legs really took over.  I think they were saying something like, “Yay!  Flat land!”.  I completed the first 800 m of my first 1200 m interval in just over 3 minutes.  I slowed a little, but averaged a 6:32 pace.

“A little fast, ” I told myself, “Take it easy on the next one.”  Clearly the voices in my head were not convincing today.  I ran the second interval at6:23 average pace.  Fatigue did start to set in and the third interval was a relatively slow 6:40 pace, but I did accidentally run .80 miles instead of .75 for that one.  The final interval was at 6:39 average pace.  A nice run, though I may regret it tomorrow.  If I could string those 4 intervals together into a solid run, I’d have my 20 minute 5K.

Walking home today I felt antsy.  Today’s run was much better than my very sluggish 6 miles in Orlando, but I suppose I can write that off to 2 days in the car.  It’s been a week since I ran 10.5 miles and over 3 weeks since I did 13 miles.  With the upcoming half marathon, I was wodnering how I would perform at that distance.  It’s tough to resist the urge to run a 13 miler just to see if I still have it.  Of course, if I don’t have it now then I’m not going to have it on Saturday no matter what.  So, may as well save the legs and give it a go in the race.  I’m pretty sure I’m ready and if I’m not, then there’s really nothing I can do now that will make me any readier than I already am.  There’s nothing left to do but eat, sleep and drink water.

The rest of the week is pretty low key.  5 miles easy tomorrow, 3 miles easy on Wednesday, Thursday off, 2 easy miles on Friday, then an early morning half marathon with 15,000 of my closest friends on Saturday.  Speaking of which, somebody actuallty wrote an article about me:

http://www.examiner.com/x-1712-Walt-Disney-World-Travel-Examiner~y2009m1d4-Runner-offers-inspiration-through-his-blog

Haha.  I don’t know how many people I’ve really inspired, but when I look back at my early posts, I realize that I sure have come a long way so I’ve at least inspired myself…and I’m having a hell of a lot of fun.

2 comments

  1. alright dude your previous post was un-commentable for me for some reason and i’ve been trying to remember this for a few days. the goals you listed the other day sound great and are similar to some of my more-future goals. it definitely sounds like you are closer to achieving them than i am. i just got both daniels’ book and pfitz’s (advanced marathoning) to read and try to put together my next plan to cut down my half pr. have you completed a daniels’ ‘training plan’ and have any thoughts, comments, recommendations? just curious as to your input, i know you’ve mentioned him before in a comment on my page. the runs you post about here make me jealous of your speed! i need to find you at the half and let you pace me to my sub 1:38, you know you’re going to blow 1:40 out of the water.

    it’s definitely cool to see just how far you’ve come since summer of ’07! you’ve made incredible improvements and i don’t doubt you’ve inspired many. enjoy the rest of this light week (don’t go for a 13 mile time trial!) and i hope you are fueling up better than i am. can’t keep my hand out of the darn m&m bag. :-/

  2. @ Lindsay: That’s funny you say that. I was thinking today that I’d find you and let you pace me. Hahaha. Maybe we’ll start our own pace group…but I’m not carrying a balloon.

    I essentially followed Daniels’ “marathon training plan A” for the upcoming Disney half. He doesn’t have a specific plan for the half, so every once in a while, I popped in some of his 5-15 K quality workouts instead of those prescribed by the marathon plan. There are also several quality workouts where he tacks 2 miles onto the beginning and end at easy pace. I usually shortened this to 1 mile on the beginning and end. I prescribed 60 miles as my maximum weekly mileage when I started and kind of based everything off of that.

    The thing I like about the book is that it really explains a lot about the purpose of each workout. So, with that knowledge I feel I was able to modify the plans slightly to suit my own personal needs. Having said that, I didn’t deviate from the plan too much.

    I certainly feel more prepared than I did last year (when I followed a Higdon plan), but I guess I’ll better be able to answer to that after I cross the finish line.

    As of now, I plan on following his elite training plan for my next marathon in Feb 2010. I’ll be focused on 5 and 10K events in the Spring, then start my base building for high mileage again in the summer.

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