Another good tempo run today. Dixie was going to do it with me but he called at 5:37 saying he could not make it because had been up late with clients. It would have been nice to run with someone else but it also meant I didn't have to rush to meet anyone. So, I took my time a little bit and didn't get out the door until 6:00 instead of 5:45. I got to the Y, warmed up inside a little bit on the arc trainer for 6 minutes, then stretched a little bit and headed outside. Today's goal was 7 miles of tempo at 7:01 ~ 7:07 range, with a total of 10 miles including warm-up/cool down. Ran about 1.75 miles at a 9:30 pace or so, then dropped off my bottle of acclerade and took a power bar gel. I was trying to follow the steps of another successful tempo run I had recently. I took off and wanted to get into a pace that felt like tempo as soon as possible, it was a little faster than 7:00 but it seemed to feel ok so I thought I would stick with it. As I knocked off the miles I still had to keep bargaining with myself - e.g. ok, mile 4, this is the minimum, mile 5 - try and get this one because I slowed down here last time, mile 6 - ok getting close, mile 7 - countdown to finish. I got 6:55, 6:49, 6:53, 6:51, 6:40, 6:54, 6:40. I think between now and the marathon I'm going to focus on finishing my remaining runs, slow down and take it easier as the "getting close to the race something might happen to me paranoia" is starting to set in. The pace for this run when projected to a 5K beats my 5K PR. I know those mileage predictor charts don't apply equally to everyone but hopefully there is some correlation. There are lots of things that can happen on marathon day so I'm going to hope for the best conditions I could hope for and go out and do my best. Average pace - 7:37 Asics gel - 365 | 