The Route 66 marathon/half marathon is on the 21st...less than two weeks now. I think I'm about as ready as I can be for it now. I made my last long run for it this past Saturday. I ran 10.75 miles in 1 hour 37 minutes. That time is running time. I did take a couple of bathroom breaks, but that would come to no more than 5 minutes additional time. I actually ran negative splits up thru mile 7, starting at 9:30 and going down to about 8:50. I finally did a bit of walking on miles 8 and 9, but my time was still under 9:30 for those two miles, so I didn't walk too much!
I feel pretty confident I can maintain a ~9-minute pace, at least thru the first 9 or 10 miles. We'll see if I can continue that for the last two or three miles. I'm hoping to finish around 2 hours. A 9 minute pace for 13.1 miles comes to 1 hour and 58 minutes, so coming in at 2 hours would pretty much require no bathroom breaks or stoppage of any kind. Either that, or I'd have to run a bit faster than a 9 minute pace...not out of the question, but I don't think I could maintain much faster than 8:45-8:50 over the course of the race. So somewhere around 2:10 to 2:15 is probably more realistic. But, there's nothing like setting lofty goals!
My other concern has been weather. Right now the forecasted trend for for next week looks to be highs in the high-50's to mid-60's with lows in the high-30's to low-40's. Anything in that range should really be pretty good running weather, so I'm pretty optimistic about that right now.
After my long run this past weekend, I'm cutting back to get ready for the event. I've done a 3-mile and a 4-mile run this week, and will do a 6-miler this weekend and do easy 3 or 4 mile runs next week too. Wish me luck!
