So I’m racing tomorrow, which should be fun. It’s the Mayors’s Marathon weekend, and there will be full, half, and a five miler, which is what I’ll be racing. It turns out it’s actually a 5.6M, which explains the slow results over the past years, which means the times were not so slow at all.

My training isn’t geared for longer races like this, but I have been doing longer tempo and threshold efforts, which should help me a bit. My long runs, which have been 13-15 will help as well. I do worry about the lack of specific pace work, though, as my stuff is either 5k pace or tempo (somewhere in the 5:50s), and little in between. I’ve got butterflies already, which is probably good. I hope this gives me a good feel for where my fitness currently resides. The course is in my hood and very familiar to me, but there is a burly hill a half mile from the finish. I figure if I can hit 5 around 28:30, I’m going to be pretty happy. After that, gun it for the finish as much as I can.

I’ll be sporting my R4V colors loud and proud, so hopefully I rep well. I feel pretty good. I’ve been holding steady mileage over 70 for the past month, and I’m recovering from some hard days earlier this week. Sunday’s long run was 13 @ 6:17 pace, and Tue was a little rough with HWT in the am; pm was 13 x 400 w/ 45s rest averaging 1:20. I scaled down Thu, limited the HWT to upper body, and just did 6 x 10s explosive steep hill bounds at the end of my run home. What does all this mean? I’ve got no excuses tomorrow. I’m fit, recovered, and ready to race hard.

Jen is running the Half, so after I finish, I’m going to turn around and run the last part of her race with her. She too is more fit than she gives herself credit for; on Wed she did 8 x 400, all around 6:40 pace! I keep telling her that with a good year of training, she could be a real contender. Convincing her has been a tougher sell, however 🙂

Well, that’s it for now. Wish us luck and stay tuned here and on FB for tomorrow’s results!