Day Seventy - "Marathon Week"

"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more. Nobody is going to win a 5,000 meter race after running an easy 2 miles. Not with me. If I loose forcing the pace all the way, well, at least I can live with myself. "

Steve Prefontaine

Today starts the traveling days into Marathon Weekend.

The Wonder Twins are heading to Huntsville this afternoon to rub elbows with Bart Yasso while I am taking a caravan of runners tomorrow morning after all of our kids are safely off to school.
I find myself as the time gets near that I am starting to feel butterflies in the pit of my stomach. It is not because I m running the marathon but the fact that I have a personal connection with all the runners that I have written about for the last couple of months. Each one of my family and friends are embarking on the last leg of a journey they started out on 16 weeks ago. With over 440 miles of running under their belts, they have only a mere26.2 miles to go to complete this voyage. The feeling I am experience is a sense of excitement and anticipation for what will happen at 11:50AM CST on Saturday & on Sunday as well when the race will be over for all 6 runners.

I spoke to my sister, Tracey last night. She wanted a few pointers on food intake, drinking and when to get to the race on Sunday. We agreed on having a large pasta meal on Friday night. On Saturday she will eat normal portions of breakfast lunch (a little larger lunch) and dinner. Tracey will also start to get up at 5AM starting today to prep herself for Sunday’s early morning. I need to email her to advise her to increase her salt intake since the temperature in Dallas is to be mid-60’s for the race.

Thursday Morning Swim Workout:

I swam with Jeff and Melissa to aviod swimming with Carmen. Man, is she fast!

300M Warm up
200M IM
5 X 200M on 3:40
200M All out: sub 3:00
4 X 400M on 7:30
Sets were:
100M Free
100M Kick
100M IM
100M Paddles
8 X 25M all out with 6 Wall Push-up.
I bagged the Wall Push-up due to the shoulder.

Just got an email from Todd wishing a few of the runner’s good luck on Saturday. We need to break away from out busy lives and sit down for a cold one before the holidays. Todd if you are reading, let's plan on a ice cold one next week. I believe I am good any day. If not, I will make the time.