Bret

AM - 3.75 miles more or less with Dan and Finn on the Milton Trail.   Wanted to keep it easy and short with Chicago on Sunday.   My plan is to run with whatever Richie feels like doing.  Lately, he's been in the mindset and fitness effort of running at 9 min pace for for the last few marathons as he works his way back to full fitness.  I think he is hesitant to push the limit given the TIA he had in Boston a couple of years ago now.   Looking at his Strava logs - he's done a decent amount of training, but not too many fast miles and the last couple of weeks with two hurricanes impacting his home - he's had more important things than running to deal with.  So I suspect that's the pace we will be running on Sunday.

I actually feel as though I could run much faster than that - assuming race conditions are good and I feel strong.  But at this point in my running / marathon racing - it is more about the social experience.  We don't run these races together to separate from each other as soon as the gun goes off...mostly we run together for as long as we can.  Sometimes one or both of us (or group of us) is nursing an injury or illness - and so we run at the pace that works for everyone.  Sometimes that means we don't necessarily finish together if things start to fall apart in the later miles but that's ok too.