A.M. Flight to Memphis, TN. It was full of adventure. Security told me I could not bring soy milk and water on the flight, so I had to check it in. But I forgot to check in the honey, or rather did not realize it was banned as well. So my bag ran the alarms, and they confiscated my honey. I did not have the time to mess with trying to check it in as well. A race volunteer by the name of David picked me and Wilson Chepkwani, a 2:14 Kenyan marathoner, 3rd this year at Hartford, at the airport. Simon Sawe was going to run, but bailed out at the last minute. Saw a list of 26 - 2 bailed out elites, both men and women. Joseph Sitinei who I raced at TOU is running as well. P.M. Around 4.1 easy miles meandering in the downtown Memphis with MickeyB. Irritated throat is giving me concerns. I know I could race a good half with it, but marathon is a long way to go. Trying to hold off problems using my favorite Zmei Gorynovich (legendary Russian-fairly tale tri-headed fire-breathing serpent) method - lots of garlic. P.M - 2. Legs felt a bit flabby, and I felt I would have a hard time falling asleep, so I decided to go for a brief shakeout. Ran around the hotel block 8 times. Course Tool showed it was 0.28, but being so short of a loop I think I ran into some small geo-coding error and mapped it out wrong. So I am going to call the distance 2.05, ran it in 13:14 with a pickup on the last 0.5 to a mild marathon pace. Felt better and more confident afterwards knowing that the systems were ready for a decent race even though perhaps not the very best.
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