Philippians 4:13

5M at a 7:00 pace in cooler (33 degrees) but no wind on a cloudy morning.  Start of the big taper week, only about 25 miles prior to race on Saturday. 

Slept in and went for a run after taking the kids to school (day off for Columbus Day!) in overcast, cool (33 degrees) but windless weather.  Took a lesson from Ed Eyestone in the most recent edition of Runner's World.  I am doing a high intensity taper this week and did some good speedwork today at the track.  2.25M warmup, then 800m, 1200m, 2x200m, 400m then slow MP cooldown.  Splits were as follows:  800 - 2:38 (5:15), 1200 - 4:08 (5:29, slow), 200 - :39 (4:52), 200 - :36 (4:40), 400 - 1:15 (4:56).  Overall a good run with average final pace of 6:32.  Good start to the week.

6M early on a warm morning (45 degrees) and no wind.  Started easy then picked up the pace as the run progressed to finish in 41:49.  Lower back/piriformis a bit stiff, but otherwise felt good.  (Kinda have a tickle in my throat but I think it is the last remnants of the cold I had).  Only run for the day....taper, taper, taper. 

No run today, long travel day.

5M on the cool, wet and dark morning. Overdressed a bit expecting the cold and rain to be worse, so the light jacket and running cap was actually hot.  Plus, there are no sidewalks here and the roads are very narrow so I was dodging cars for the entire run.  Nice and easy in 36 minutes.  Feeling good.  Day with the family today. 

3.1M early on a cool and breezy morning.  Just nice and easy with some slow MP segments.  Feeling mostly good, had a bit of a side cramp right at the end. 

Off to the Children's Museum this morning with the family then to the Expo and package pickup.  Meeting up with JimF at the expo and probably doing a course tour with Jim today. 

Getting antsy....weather looking pretty cool, still trying to finalize clothes for the race tomorrow.

Not my day today...2:43:12 (way off of goals).  That said, I was able to finish 5th OA and 1st Master (the 4 ahead of me were all in their 20's).  Awards went 5 deep OA so I nabbed a plaque and a gift certficate instead of an age group award.   

Ran first 15 miles with Greaham Niemer and Chris Colgan (Greaham ended up 2nd, Chris faded at 20 miles).  We went out pretty easy hitting all the early miles between 5:45 - 6:10 (depening on the hills) and thought we were doing ok.  But I knew it was going to be slow day when we hit the half in 1:19 and change.  Then at 15M I really started to feel my IT band starting to get tight and at 18M it was getting bad and I really slowed.  At 25M the wheels really started to fall off...I was running 3rd OA, then got passed like I was standing still and then a young college age kid name Tom started charging on me just before 26M then nabbed 4th with 10 meters to go as I pushed with all I had...that sucked! 

The day started off cold but ended up being about perfect running conditions (though it never got much above 40 degrees until the last 5 miles).   May have overdressed a bit but was comfortable for most of the race.  This was probably the most convoluted course I have ever run, lots of turns and twists, doubling back on itself and running against the crowds of runners coming the other direction.  It was pretty running through the park with all the fall colors but it was too full of turns (way worse that the second half of Utah Valley).

Overall pretty disappointed with the performance against what I went into the race expecting to do.  So, I think that this race performance was just result of accummulation of mileage and races over the year....now time to relax and scale back for a while.  This was my fifth marathon this year so I am sure that the "trials of miles and miles of trials" attributed to this result, but I feel that I had a good racing year on whole.

Splits: 5:47, 6:08, 6:10, 5:56, 5:55, 5:59, 5:57, 5:52, 5:54, 6:05, 6:24, 6:09, 5:54, 5:58, 6:15, 6:08, 6:10, 6:21, 6:18, 6:19, 6:26, 6:30, 6:33, 6:35, 6:32, 6:50, 2:07 (.2 or I had it a 0.35M).