The Home Stretch

I got in yet another taper run of thirty minutes at an 8:34 pace. I feel refreshed both mentally and physically and I cannot wait to run this marathon. In fact, I've spent a lot of my time tapering thinking about ways to improve my training for the next marathon. More speed work, lots more hill work, more intervals, and a faster pace for my base runs. As gratifying as it is to see how far I've come since January, I'm equally excited to see how much farther I can progress down the road. Of course, to get a solid grasp on my progress, it's good to have bench marks, and Sunday will certainly serve that purpose for me. I feel like I'm trained and ready to complete the marathon and still feel like a healthy, happy, functioning human being, but I don't think I'm in good enough shape to push the pace just yet. My goal this weekend is primarily to finish, have fun, and gain experience for the future, and I think I can succeed in that.

Now for my real die hard fans (that would most likely be my family) there's a lovely and rather novel feature of the Green Bay Marathon that you can find here. Simply enter my bib number (1202) and either you cell phone number or email address, and my split times will be sent to you, live, by text or email as I pass the timing stations. The timing mats are at miles 5, 10, 13.1, 15, 20, and the finish. I'll be back tomorrow with one final update, gone on Sunday, and back on Monday or Tuesday with the race report. So anyone who doesn't feel like waiting that long for the results and is really bored on Sunday, is welcome to follow my progress live. I'm shooting for a 4:15:00 finish, and the race starts at 7 am central.