Countdown....1 week

The marathon is one week away.  I'm pretty excited about it this year compared to last year when I had much more trepidation.  Last year was my first big race at such a long distance.  I did the half marathon but really felt like I finished poorly.  My legs gave out on me starting after mile 10 so the last 3 miles were a chore.  I feel like I've trained much better this year from the standpoint of getting longer training runs in.  Last year I only went 9 or 10 miles in my training and only did that a few times.  This year I've done better about completing long runs in my training.  I have routinely run 8 and 9 miles during the week and often was able to get in a 13 or 14 mile run on the weekend.  I don't think I'll have a problem with my legs giving out on me like they did last year.

Yesterday (Saturday) I met Rendon at the Chesapeake boathouse for a 13 mile training run.  This will be Rendon's first long distance race as he just started running this year.  He and I ran in an 8K race in February so he could experience a race environment but this is stepping up quite a bit.  He has put in at least a couple of long training runs of 13 miles or so but I'm not sure exactly how many he's done.  I know I've been running more than he has but then I'm much older so I need the training worse.

Anyway, we met at the Chesapeake boathouse at 7 am on Saturday.  The weather was ideal for running.  There was hardly any wind at all and the temperature was about 49 or 50 when we started.  We headed west on the north side of the river.  I really enjoy running along the river as it is scenic, you don't have to worry about cars, and you also get to see other runners which always inspires me.  Rendon started out very strong so I let him lead out.  He was probably running at about an 8:40 p/mile pace which is a little faster than I usually start out so I lagged behind a little bit.  Rendon ran strong for 5 miles and then started to slow down a bit.  I finally caught him a little after passing May avenue.  At Portland avenue we crossed over the river and ran on the south side.  We continued west almost to Meridian where the trail ends and you have to turn around.  It had been about 7 miles so we walked while I ate my GU pack.  Rendon had already eaten his.  He had vanilla bean and I had chocolate.  I liked the chocolate and Rendon said the vanilla bean was also pretty tasty.  We probably walked for about a minute to a minute and a half and then resumed our run.  My legs felt strong and I just seemed to be in a good groove so I continued on at about an 8:40 pace which is where Rendon started us at the beginning.  We saw some rowers on the river including the OU women's team.  They were also having some Olympic tryouts this weekend for kayaking so there were some others out there too.  We ran back east on the south side of the river until we got to Robinson and then crossed over back to the north side.  There's a small water fountain in a park by the cross over so I stopped and got some water.  Rendon did the same thing when he crossed over.  DG Productions sponsors several races around the city for runners and they were holding an event for victims of sexual abuse (green ribbon).  As I was coming down the final 1/10th mile to the finish line the race started so I found myself running against the tide of runners starting their race.  I had to move off the path onto the grass in order not to collide with other people.  I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Plus, it was at the beginning of their race so they hadn't really had a chance to disperse very much and were pretty tightly packed.  I finally gave up and stopped my running app with a hundred yards to go or so.  My GPS showed the run to be 13.84 miles.  When I got to the finish line I noticed the track continues around on the south side of the river so I think it's just one big loop.  If I had known that I could have not crossed over at Robinson and just run back to the finish line on the south side of the river and avoided all the traffic.  Lesson learned.  My time was 2:02:54 which felt really good.  I had stopped a few times to look around, guide Rendon since he didn't know the route, and feel I could have run even faster if it had been the race.  So I feel good about next week and I hope everyone else does too.

I know R Jay and Curtis are doing the full marathon so they've got a big test ahead of them.  Maybe I can run a full one at some point but I knew I wasn't ready after trying a 17 mile run back in late February or early March.  I'm excited to see everyone at the race.  I will miss Thais dearly but it makes me happy that we can run in the Memorial Marathon in memory of our sister.  It's neat that Leslie and Elfriede are going to run the 5K too.