Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The first signs of spring...

Nah, not really, but tonight I declared it a non-training night and went shopping. Yep, went down to the German equivalent of Home Depot and picked up a portable scaffolding that was on sale. That rain trough along the edge of the roof of the house is now within reach! Come spring weather, mild-mannered Running Jack will transform into Super Handyman Jack able to leap tall buildings with a single bound (with help of the new scaffolding at least ;-) I will at least be able to strip down and repaint the rain trough and do some other touch-ups.

But in the meantime I still have a couple miles to run. Tomorrow and Thursday I want to run my 14K/8.7M trail, once easy, once a little quicker. Saturday is a medium long run on the schedule, somewhere around 2 ½ hours. If the weather stays warm I am tempted to run a little further, but we’ll see.

Marathon Countdown

So 4 ½ weeks until “M” day - one long run left to complete, then some tapering. My strategy? Well, run as fast as I can without bonking ;-)

Actually it will depend an awlful lot on the weather, M-day, March 12th, is still within the range of some miserable winter weather. Too cold and Jack goes slow, ice is not nice, and too much snow and nobody knows. I would like to finish in 4:15:00 or less, and I will certainly do my best to achieve this.

In the way of excuses I can only offer that this will be my third marathon in 10 months, which at my age (grandpa) and level of experience (first year of marathoning) is a lot. I have not been running the hills as I was doing while training for my 2nd marathon and I think I will pay the price on race day.

On the positive side maybe race day will be a nice spring day, my breakfast cereal will be spiked with high-energy pills, my ego will be on turbo-boost and I will fly through the air with the greatest of ease and land at the finish line in a sub-4. Anything is possible, right :-)

My only fear is tapering, tapering and nothing but the tapering ;-)

Comments:
Looks like you're shooting for your sub-4:00 a week after I am. Yes, the taper is tricky. We work hard for weeks and weeks and then suddenly drop off. I think we go through a physiological and psychological "something's amiss here" and it seems just plain wrong.

Good luck and run well!
 
Don't run faster than me, or you will be putting me under too much pressure! ;-)
 
He runs...AND he fixes things??? Next thing he'll be telling us is he's a car mechanic. And a truffle (chocolate) maker...

good luck with the taper!
 
WOW! I can hardly believe you're down to one last long run to go before the taper!! I'm so excited!! Happy running!
 
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