7/19/2009 - One more week!!

I can't believe one week from today is race day! I am excited/nervous, but ready to go. I had a pretty good week, and really started to feel rested. One more week of taper and I will be good to go. I ran 41 miles this week, and felt stronger as the week went on. Yesterday I had an awesome track workout. My knee has been getting better which is a good sign. It was a little sore today, but that was expected after yesterdays workout. This week will be easy and should give it some good time to heal. I am not worried at all about how it will feel on race day.

On tuesday I ran 9 miles. It was an okay run, nothing special about it. Friday morning was a 7 mile tempo run. Again, nothing amazing about it, but it was solid. Saturday was my track workout, which was 7 miles with all the warmup and warmdown. I ran 4x800s, and was faster than I have ever been. I ran 2:37, 2:36, 2:35, 2:34. If you look at what I have been running, you will see that that wa sa dramatic improvement. I really felt like I had my legs back and wasn't running on jello legs like I had been in the past. The best part for me was that I was able to be fast from the beginning. It didn't take me forever to warm up like previous track workouts.

This morning, I ran my 13 mile run. I ran it in 1:30.35 which isnt bad at all considering that I ran my track workout yesterday afternoon. Usually I do the 13 mile runs on Tuesdays after taking Monday off so to run 1:30 was good. I would like to run the first half of my marathon at around 1:30 or under.

Overall, this week was pretty good. I am starting to feel more and more rested with every day that goes by.

Monday - rest
Tuesday - 9 mile medium long run
Wednesday - 5 mile track workout, 3x800s: 1)2:47, 2)2:45, 3) 2:43
Thursday - rest
Friday - 7 mile tempo run
Saturday - 7 mile track workout, 4x800s: 1) 2:37, 2) 2:36, 3) 2:35, 4)2:34
Sunday - 13 mile long run, 1:30.35

This week will include rest, stretching, and easy runs, with 2 tempo runs. I plan on running an easy mile with some dynamic stretches tomorrow. Tuesday, I will do a 6 mile tempo run. Wednesday will be an easy 4 miles, probably on a track. Thursday will be a 4 mile tempo run. Friday will be about 3 miles, easy and probably on a track. Saturday morning, at about 24 hours before I start the race on Sunday, I will run an easy 2 miles consisting of a dynamic warmup, 1-2 mins really fast (probably a sprint 4-600 meters), followed by a mile of warmdown. Then just rest up until the race!!

I will do a few more posts this week before the race on Sunday. I will talk about how I plan on running the race, and what my goals are. I'm going to go pick up my packet on Friday at the Expo. The Expo is always a fun event- It just gets you in that running mood, and ready to go!