Toronto!!

Work and travel have kept me from the blogosphere for far too long!! That’s no excuse, of course – there’s always a few minutes here or there to do up a quick post, but I suck at balancing things when work gets busy.

It’s now the Friday before the marathon. To be honest, my confidence level is not as high as it should be. I feel like I had some solid training, but my taper has been a disaster. Well, it’s been a ton of fun – but a disaster from the point of view of race preparation. The thing is that my brother-in-law got married at a resort – you know, one of those destination weddings. So that meant 7 days of drinking and eating and partying. I meant to be good – I meant to exercise restraint – but, you know... it’s rare to get that kind of opportunity, so I lived it up a little. Sometimes life gets in the way of training – but, of course, life comes first.

So the thing is that I’m rested, but I’m heavier than I should be. My mileage dropped and my caloric intake rose – the result is useless pounds that I have to carry for 42k. Oh well. No biggie. There’s nobody to blame but me -- and now there's more of me to blame!

The other thing that I’m worried about is the fact that I didn’t do enough long running at marathon pace. And the longish stuff I did do didn’t feel great. By now, a 3:55 k should feel effortless – but it isn’t quite like that. So I’m just going to have to go by feel and see where things settle on race day. The weather looks good, so I shouldn’t have any excuses.

Despite all these grumblings, I am super excited to be racing. Alex will not be doing the whole thing with me, but he’ll be there for a good chunk of the second half (bandit!) – which will help me immensely when the going gets rough. I have no idea how the time will end up, but I can’t wait to see where my fitness is – and then to set my sights on the next one.

Okay Toronto. Let’s see what you got!