Angie<\/a> asked me what my most prevalent emotion is right now; excitement? Anxiety? Nausea? My answer: YES. I’ve experienced all three (and then some) many times over the past few days. But in the end I have to remind myself it’s just a race. I know I’ve done my best to prepare, yet you never know what race day will bring.<\/p>\nDespite my anxiety, this has been a very easy week. I’ve taken my last few runs slow, save for yesterday’s 7-mile “dress rehearsal” where I practiced my pacing strategy. My diet this week has been the healthiest it’s ever been, although I did allow myself a couple of glasses of wine with dinner the other night (not only did it taste fabulous with the grilled flat iron steak, it calmed my nerves). Stretching and a couple of massages have worked out the kinks in my right calf, and daily snorts of Zicam have held an impending cold at bay.<\/p>\n
While the final test will be on Sunday, I feel Pfitz’s program is a good one for me. I made a few tweaks, primarily to work in a couple of races, but I’ve run more than 97% of the called-for mileage. I’ll definitely follow this program again when I’m looking to run in a specific time. In fact, depending on what happens on Sunday, I may turn to Pfitz again for the Royal Victoria marathon in October. But assuming I BQ at North Olympic, I may take things easy and just follow a plan to get me to the finish in Victoria.<\/p>\n
I’d like to thank everyone for coming here and offering your words of encouragement and support. They really have meant a lot to me. Because North Olympic is such a small race, live tracking isn’t available. But my darling will have his iPhone and hopefully I’ll be able to post my results soon after the race (and of course I’ll write an excruciatingly detailed race report).<\/p>\n
Here’s the final recap!<\/p>\n
Sunday<\/strong><\/em>: since I signed up for the Runnersworld Online June mileage challenge I postponed my 13-mile run to today. I was shooting for a 9:30 overall pace, but wanted to practice my pacing strategy of starting out slow. However, my hips were a tad creaky so I ended up running a rather slow pace throughout (9:40 overall). I’m sure it was good for me.<\/p>\nMonday<\/strong><\/em>: I ditched my regular arm weight routine this week and concentrated instead on ab work and stretching. For the afternoon recovery run I used my heart rate as my guide with a goal of keeping it less than 70% of maximum. Overall pace: 9:33.<\/p>\nTuesday<\/strong><\/em>: one of the best classes ever. We did a lot of warrior poses, which helped to stretch out my hip flexors. My dress rehearsal was scheduled for today but I opted to postpone it to Thursday and take a rest day from running.<\/p>\nWednesday<\/strong><\/em>: more stretching and ab work; afternoon 5-mile recovery run (9:29 overall pace).<\/p>\nThursday<\/strong><\/em>: 7-mile dress rehearsal. My target marathon race pace is 9:10, however, I plan on running the first 8-9 miles at 9:20, then the next 8-9 miles at 9:05-9:10. Assuming I feel good after that I’ll finish strong. For my dress rehearsal I practiced running two miles at 9:20, two at 9:10, and the remaining three at 8:55, 8:50 and 8:45 respectively. I ran the first four miles just a couple of seconds faster than goal, but a hill at mile 5 slowed me down to a 9-minute pace. However, I picked it up during the last two miles, running them at 8:36 and 8:34.<\/p>\nFriday<\/strong><\/em>: more abs and stretching. I’ll probably hit the pool for a few laps this afternoon, and may do so again tomorrow morning. My darling accidently scheduled a photo shoot tomorrow, so I’ll need to work off some pent-up energy while waiting for him to finish. We hope to be on the road by 2 p.m., which will put us at the expo about 5. We’ll then head over to the pasta feed, then hopefully get a full night’s sleep.<\/p>\nWish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well folks, this is it. It’s almost show time. Hard to believe I began this journey back in early February. Where HAS the time gone? Oh yeah — in training. Angie asked me what my most prevalent emotion is right now; excitement? Anxiety? Nausea? My answer: YES. I’ve experienced all three (and then some) many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beantown","category-pfitzinger-1855"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatdrinkrunwoman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}