Well ladies and gents (and other), it’s race week!  This Sunday is the San Antonio Marathon where I will crush Colin and his Chicago PR and regain the title Colin and I will amicably run together.  It sure doesn’t feel like it’s this weekend though, and Colin agrees.  We’ve talked about the race to no end for the last 4 months, so it isn’t so much a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.”  We’ve also both been training like crazy and feeling very prepared to Rock ‘n’ Roll*.

With only 11 or so miles left in training and 5 days til the race, I feel ready.  Tapering is a pain, and I’m considering dropping it from my next marathon training all together.  This time around I’ve run 728 miles for 101 hours, burning approximately 93,741 calories (~27 lbs), since July 12th.  Those are some big numbers that suggest I’m prepared, and that’s my biggest misgiving about all this marathon training.  After all that work and effort, there’s no guarantee I’ll be feeling unstoppable because of a single bad night of sleep or a meal that didn’t sit well.  Part of the challenge I guess!

Anyway, there have been high points and low points, and all that’s left is to now is to not get hit in the calf with a slapshot** injured.  As Colin has said before, “the hay is in the barn” and we are as ready as we can be.  No amount of running now will really affect how we do Sunday, so we just have to trust in the training.

The weather forecast is a little shaky, so we’re trying to ignore it for a few more days.  One site says high / low of 71 / 55, another says 68 / 50, so they’re narrowing down the ballpark, but the cloudy / rainy / sunny prediction is still up in the air.  I wish my job had the same tolerance for being completely wrong.  Think about it, a weatherman weatherwoman weatherperson meteorologist can get on TV and say “there’s a 50% chance of rain”.  That means s/he has no idea if it’s going to rain.  It means “flip a coin and that’ll tell you if it’s going to rain”.  Come on, weatherpeople, let’s try to get a little better at this, shall we?

Anyway, I’m really excited for the race, even if it doesn’t feel like it’s this weekend yet.  In case you don’t hear from me before the race, keep an eye out for #2244!  Goal: faster than 3:27:28 AND faster than #3205.  Failure is not an option!

*That’s a bit of a play on words, since RnR (Rock ‘n’ Roll) is the event group who puts on this race, as well as several other very large marathons around the country.

**In my hockey game this past Sunday, 1 week til the race, I took a slapshot to the lower leg that put me down and out for a bit.  Thankfully it doesn’t seem to be marathon-threatening.