our choices show what we truly are

Seven easy miles, no soreness in my legs from yesterday (that is good) just some general fatigue. A few more miles during the week, not an official taper, and then sunday the big day. My only goal for sunday it will be racing, going out with the goal of doing the best that I can. I have already experienced, during the last three marathons, the feeling of going out easy and then crashing anyway, I will crash big time on sunday and it will be very painful, but at least I will have tried to do my best.

I spent this vacation day, just sleeping in and eating, no runs.

Speed work tonight. 12X400m at 5k pace with 200m recovery jog. My target pace was 90 seconds but I didn't know if I could keep it for the whole series. Last time I did a 400m series at 5k pace was probably two years ago. I ended up going consistently faster: 86, 86, 90, 87, 87, 88, 89, 84, 89, 86, 89, 90 AP 87,6. At the end of the 6th repeat I couldn't remember (my brain didn't have much oxygen available) how many repeats were left, I had to wait for my Garmin to tell me how many, but the first time I missed it because it was dark (that is the reason I went really fast in that one) then I turned the light on and I saw that I had four left. I felt really good throughout the whole run.

I didn't need a fast run tonight after last night workout and 4 days before a trail marathon but "things" at work are messed up, I badly needed some good pain to feel better. I finished 4 miles at marathon pace (in 30:03) and when I got back to the car I was feeling a little bit better. Problems obviously didn't go away, but at least my brain stopped constantly thinking about them.

I did an unofficial race tonight... I got on the subway train at 6:30pm, at 6:48 the subway arrived at the station with 2 minutes to spare before the train to go home was about to leave. We (all the people on the subway train) were aware that we had to sprint all out (in civilian clothing and shoes), doing 100m on the subway platform, 4 flights of stairs, 200m of tunnels and passages (with a 90 degrees corner) and then the final climb on 2 flight of stairs to the train platform. As soon as the door opened we started really fast, I was in the middle of the pack, but when we reached the first set of stairs at the top I was already in the leading position, but my backpack was shaking too much, I removed it and kept it in my hand, from that point on I was on a time trial to beat the clock. When I reached the train  platform the train was arriving, one last sprint and I made it.

About one third of the people in the same race made it ok, some of them were on the verge of puking once on the train, others were sweating profusely, but we all looked at each other satisfied of the accomplished race.

This is a typical side effect of tapering.