It's Party Time!

Well, maybe not party time.
Rather, Marathon Time.

I'm running the Bay State Marathon on Sunday. It's supposed to be wet, cold and windy. I'm holding out hope for a cool, crisp, fall day, which is what I imagined it would be when I signed up.

I  haven't written about training for this event. It's been good, though. It's been all running for the last three weeks. Heavenly, I say. Just heavenly.  No swimming, No biking, no super long hours. It's been swell.

I did have a couple doozie workouts in there. The hardest was a 22 mile run with an average pace 25 seconds per mile off my goal marathon pace. That one left me shattered. I followed that run up a couple days later with the Yasso 800s. The Yasso 800s consist of 10 x 800 with full recoveries done at the hardest consistent pace you can handle. Those were hard, but I nailed those suckers. Harder still was a few days later when I did 3 min on, 3 min off x 8, with the on at faster than 5k pace. During that one I nearly cried.

Running a fall marathon this year feels totally different than the other fall marathons I've run.  For those, the marathon was my singular focus all season. This season the IM was my singular focus, and then it was just fun fun fun in the way of sprints and Olympics--and oh! Why don't I add a marathon in there?  I've only been totally focusing on the marathon for the last three weeks, and I've only had one run longer than 16 since Lake Placid.

Still, I'm hoping for a P.R.
Actually, I'm hoping to slam my old P.R.

My tactic for this race is to run it like I own it. I'm not going to take it out at 10K pace (duh) but I'm not taking it out like a slug either, hoping to prevent the fade. I'm going to go out evenly and on goal pace, and hold that--- til 26.2. So, I'll either have a massive PR, or I will totally crack. I'm hoping for the former. Wish me luck.