3 days and counting

Thats right. Just a little over three days till the big event. I am feeling pretty good, not much different than I have before any other long run weekend. Only thing, this time I'll be going longer than ever before! Mentally I can make it. Physically I can make it if my legs will hold up. I am still worried about the calf cramping but I have a plan for that. My achilles may or may not hold up but I'm thinking I can limp a 12:00 minute pace if I have to. I wish I was running in new shoes but I just couldn't make the transition in time so my old shoes will have to do. Socks are good, shorts are good. I have various tested options in shirts depending on race day temps. I'm taking almost every piece of running gear I have just in case. It's a good thing I bought a new Nike bag to carry it all in. I have my stock of gels ready. Need to pick up some Accelerade to take tomorrow. I have a pace figured out, I am still debating in my head on my run/walk strategy.

Friday night and Saturday should be fun. There will be a big group of Cruisers showing up. I'm sure Saturday night we will carb load at some Italian place. There are only 4 that are running the full. The others are running the half. The half this year will start one hour after the full. Which is good for our group, at least they won't have to wait as long for me to finish that way.

I wanted to run tonight but instead we did Colton's. Guess my protein loading is over for today. I'll sneak a short run in tomorrow evening and then I am done till Saturday. I did get 4.3 miles in last night at the running clinic. Coach Dennis told me just to run an easy 3-4 and do some strides so thats what I did, or tried to do. The warm up run to our normal running area was a little over .6. Then I did 3 strides. That gave me one mile at 11:48 pace. Then I started what was suppose to be a slow jog around the block. Second mile I was thinking probably an easy 10:25 or so but it was actually a 9:28. Way too fast. But it didn't feel fast. I managed to slow it down by throwing some walks in on the next mile coming in at an 11:24. 3 strides and I was done and running back to the school slowly. Finished with an average of 11:12 which was about what I needed.

Ok, enough rambling. I need to go pack.