Well, the hay's in the barn now. I've done the work, the long slow miles, the MP miles, the strides, the intervals, the tempo runs. It's just a matter of resting, relaxing, recharging the glycogen stores and getting ready to nail one in about 160 hours in Oregon.
Seven days. After all these months, it's down to this. I'm more ready now than I was in December, that's for sure. As the football coaches say, now I just have to execute. I've got a good game plan, I've got the base built, I've worked on the speed. I just have to do what needs to be done for just under 3.5 hours next Saturday, and I will have necessitated ANOTHER change in the name of this blog.
When I started this blog last year, I thought I could break four hours, but I wasn't sure about BQ. Sasha convinced me I had it in me, but I had to make the commitment to get there -- meaning a lot more miles than I had been willing to put in to that point. Well, Mr. Pachev, I did what you said, and maybe then some, and I think I'm ready.
Today's run was on the bike path through the middle of both Chatham and Harwich, which are two neighboring towns on Cape Cod. If you look at Cape Cod on a map and see the resemblance to an arm, Chatham is the elbow; Harwich is the outer end of the triceps :) It was almost exactly a mile from our cottage to reach the bike path. I then turned east and ran into the middle of Chatham, past the airport and the high school and a bunch of boat yards (never saw the ocean, though, but saw some lakes) to the end of that path. Turned around and doubled back, then went over the line into Harwich, ran a mile or so into Harwich, doubled back again and went back to the cottage. Total time 1:51, averaging 8:29; ran the last two miles plus in sub GMP.
Good thing about this run is that it was sufficiently hilly that I had to work hard to maintain the pace, similar to what the miles in the late teens will be like in Newport, but because of fatigue, not uphills. Never ran a mile over 9:00, even early in the run when I was TRYING to run more conservatively, and if I hadn't had to wait on traffic at so many places where the trail crossed roads, I'd have probably been two minutes faster. Legs felt good, and should feel even better when I step to the line in Oregon. | 