I am signed up to the run the Shamrock Marathon in less than 2 weeks. My training for the most part has gone okay. I am a little worried about my endurance though. I have trained harder and faster with the exception of the long runs which I have broken up, maybe running part in the morning, and part in the afternoon. Or running them all at once, but taken short breaks. I have done a lot more cross training.
I have had some really great runs though. Such as running a 6 minute mile. And running 5 miles at 7:00 pace. So we will see.
I have been having intermittent discomfort in my left hamstring/glut. But this has been going on for a while. Though it is a little more noticible today. Pre-marathon stuff?
The weather is still a big question mark. I am hoping it wont be too cold. And especially not cold and rainy. That would suck. I will bring a variety of clothing just in case.
All hotel reservations are made. I have been playing a little bit with gu’s. I tried some Clif Shot’s strawberry gel during my run the other day. It was doable I guess. I belched a bit afterward. That made me a little nervous. I haven’t done like 5 or six of them in a 3 hour stretch. I have liked Jelly Belly Sport Beans, but they are hard to chew while running. But I was thinking in the last couple days whether I could just swallow the beans without chewing. Then they could disolve in my stomach without the difficulty of chewing.
Headphones are banned at the race, but I want my music. My current plan is the run with my Sandisk Sansa strapped to the back of my running hat. I have done some short training runs with it and it worked fine. Not sure how it will be after 3 1/2 hours.
The marathon will have pacers, including a 3:30 pacer. I am planning on tagging along with the 3:30 pacer as much as I can while still taking my walk breaks. I may do 30 second walk breaks, or maybe 45 seconds. The logner the walk breaks, the faster I have to run between them. What I could do is run at 8:00 pace, walk for 30 seconds, then run faster to catch up with the pacer, then settle in at 8:00 pace till then next mile.

This will be my 5th marathon, and 5 is one of my lucky numbers. Maybe this will be the one where I qualify for Boston. I only missed a BQ in Las Vegas by 5 1/2 minutes. And this is a much flatter course.

Posted by Rob in Whatever on March 3rd, 2008 |