Final training run before the marathon

I am surprised at how serious I am taking this run. Usually my running races are just training efforts to gauge where my fitness is before going into a goal race on the duathlon circuit. The build up is that of any other day of training and I tend not to worry much about being truely prepared for the run.

For some reason, I am more organized and excited for this running event. My workouts have been very consistant with the program I am following and my body (feeling as strong as ever at this time of the season) has allowed me to keep up with all the quicker and longer runs I needed to incorporate into the sessions.

Tonight was my final run before taking two days off to rest up my legs for Sunday. It was only a short 6k run with 4k at a decent pace to keep the intesity in the system. It is a taper method (shorter runs with high intesity instead of my longer runs at a snails pace taper efforts of the past) I picked up in my readings that I hope translates into a solid, alert start to the run.

As they say, all the hard work is now behind me and hopefully I have trained my body to perform efficiently come the weekend. I am confident that I can hit my goal (as long as the wind expected Saturday night has faded for us!) but have to make sure that I am satisfied with that time if I amm feeling strong around 26 to 28k into the run. Do I want to leave an even better time on the road and just be satisfied hitting the target? Not usually. Problem is that it can go from great to bad in a short period of time in the marathon so there is always the chance of blow up and totally destroying all the good achieved in the first part of the race.

In a 5k or 10k race you can keep the gas down and go after that super low PB. If you burn out around the three quarter pole you can usually still jog it in for a decent time. You can also run several of these in a year and try agian. With the marathon, I feel I am good for one (at race pace) per year, at the most.

Well, we will see how things unfold and I will be back with a race report for sure early next week.

Good luck to all those running this weekend! I know a bunch of Falcons will be gliding along side you.