If you can do it, then you know you can do it.

The next significant point of departure

The pace of blog posts here by the timelapserunner has slowed dramatically as the big event approaches. My goodness, we had a super long weekend run last week and didn't even report on it. Perhaps all that can be said has been said. Perhaps we're entering a more spiritual zone around the upcoming event, one where words are less meaningful. Perhaps we've just worn out on writing blog posts. In any event, we're just about on auto-pilot now, with very few training runs left and very few decisions left to be made as well. Now, a brief summary and look at the punch list.


Saturday a week ago, the timelapserunner put in his last long weekend run, the 26-miler prescribed by the Jeff Galloway program we're using. For reasons that may or may not be obvious depending on whether one has trained for a marathon, we actually ran 26.22 miles that day. Let it not be said that the timelapserunner has never completed the marathon distance because he has now. It may be a little bit of the "if you can do it, then you know you can do it" going on here. But in any case, there is no unknown about whether we can make the distance and survive: we can. Not that we finished either quickly or easily. Total time: 5:22:43. During that time, we almost got run over crossing a busy street and wrenched our back checking for traffic at another point in the run. And we stumbled back to our doorstep after clicking the end-of-run on our watch.

Long, it was. But done. Over. In summary, our training is essentially complete.

A few decisions remain, though some have been made:

Remaining training runs - we've only got a few left: two weekday runs of four miles each this and next week, and a 6 miler on the weekend before the marathon. We'll play the pace on the weekday runs by ear, based on our health (see below).

Water and nourishment resources - we've decided to carry these with us. We're used to that, will know what we've got and have access to it at any time, and don't want to depend on race management resources and whatever vagaries might ensure with those.

Clothing - this will be a race day decision, of course. If the temperature or even the windchill will be in the 30s for several hours, we're likely going to wear our tights, long shirt, head warmer and gloves. If a bit warmer, then short sleeves with the arm warmers and gloves. If warmer yet, singlet and shorts only. We're just likely to be a bit cold at the start and a bit warm at the end.

Pacing for the race - this is the biggie and is still unresolved. One might look at our last long run effort and decide that we can go for the 4:59:59 target without unreasonable risk. After all, we ran the first 13 miles of our last long run at an average page of 12:28 per mile, and the last 13 at a pace of 12:11 per mile - largely influenced by a fast last mile or two. However, 4:59:49 is like 11:27 per mile for the entire race - considerable faster than any of those numbers. True, the adrenalin rush on the day of the race might be a significant aid to a faster finishing time, but this past week we've also come down with a rhino virus and missed two of our weekday runs.

One idea is to pace off the 5:30 pacer and go negative split if we feel good enough in the 2nd half of the race - but this will NOT allow us to break 5 hours. Another idea is to pace off the 5:00 pacer and try to hang in there - though being willing to slow down and come in at a longer time if that pace cannot be held. The though of running a positive split because of exhaustion is not appealing to me, however.

Add on top of this interest by both the timelapserunner and his office mate in trying to perhaps run the race together. So, pacing is still up in the air and perhaps will not be decided on till the week of the race.

This may or may not be our last post till the race, so keep the timelapserunner in your prayers and intentions between now and then. We'll get back to you after the confetti is swept up, for sure.