The plan today was to go out and run 24 miles in 3 hours (7:30 pace). I wore my Boston race shoes and socks. It was only my 3rd time to wear theses shoes and first time to wear this pair of socks. Both passed the test well. I will now put them aside until race day. I got started around 4:20 this morning and my stomach felt a bit queasy on the first mile, but then I started to find my grove and felt pretty good the rest of the run. I hit the 12 mile mark 4 seconds ahead of pace still feeling strong, but knowing that the second half of the run had a lot more big hills than the first half. I continued to run strong and was able to push a little on the downhill parts of the run. Mile 24 was about a 200 ft climb, so I needed to bank a little time. I had about a minute banked with one mile to go and was happy that I didn't need it all. I ended up finishing in 2:59:21 with 39 seconds to spare. AP 7:28 My splits were all over the place do to the nature of the rolling hills. You can tell which were up and which were down just looking at them. I was happy that my only mile over 8 minutes was the first mile where I was still warming up and finding my groove: 8:06, 7:25, 7:23, 7:22, 7:10, 7:32, 7:13, 7:21,7:13,7:19, 7:53, 7:59, 7:39, 7:06, 7:47, 7:24, 7:28, 7:34, 7:05, 7:06, 7:15, 7:42, 7:25, 7:54. I'm very happy with my final really long run. All I have to do is run 2.2 more miles in the same amount of time as today. With a little taper, some carb loading, and some race day magic, I think I'll have a good shot at it. | 