Race Week

This week began my official taper week for the half marathon. It started out on Sunday by doing an easy 11 miles with Erin and Ellie on the trail in Star City heading north towards Point Marion. It was a nice day and the trees were beautiful. Unfortunately, I felt horrible the entire way and could not wait to finish. This is not the way I prefer to feel the week before the race that I have been training for the last four months. I decided to take the following two days off (Monday and Tuesday) and get rested up as well as try to take in some more calories to refuel. I came back on Wednesday for an easy 6 miles and felt awesome. It took everything I had to hold myself back and not push the pace too hard. I then ran 4 on Thursday and 2 miles today. It felt like I had just left for my run when I was already getting back home. I will be taking tomorrow off before the race. Hopefully all of this will work and I will feel refreshed and ready to go on Sunday.

My goal for the race is to finish around 1:22. I think that I can probably run around a 1:20 but after my horrible half marathon in the spring I have decided to take a more conservative approach. I am planning on going out somewhere between 6:15 and 6:20 pace. This will probably be the most difficult part for me because I am horrible at pacing myself in the first few miles of longer races. After that I have no real major race plans. If I feel good and think I can go, I will try to slowly pick up the pace throughout the rest of the race. If not I can hold steady and still finish around my goal time. I will see how I feel on race day.

Here is the list of my major concerns right now (in no particular order):

1. What racing flats to wear: Adidas Adios or Nike LunaRacer? I am going to take both with me and decided in the morning.
2. Weather: The weather report for Sunday has changed just about every day that I check. Right now it is saying partly cloudy with a high of 50 and a low of 37. Arm warmers or no arm warmers? Gloves or no gloves? What shorts to wear? Again, I will probably bring everything with me and decided in the morning.
3. Dinner the night before: What will sit well with me and leave me fueled for the morning? This can be difficult in a strange city.
4. Wait time: The location of the start line is difficult to get to once they have closed the streets. They are recommending being at the line and hour before the race. This is a long time for me. What am I going to do? What if it is cold?
5. Am I going to have another bad race? I hope not!

Yes, I know I am crazy. This is nothing out of the ordinary for me. I get like this before almost all of my races. I think that Erin is probably about ready to kill me right now because I go over this list with her just about every second of the day. I also try on both pairs of shoes every night in my attempt to decide what to wear, and I am still undecided. Anyway, good luck to everyone else out there that is running this weekend. I will try to have a full recap after the race.