I have read and been told that toward the end of a training cycle, when it is time for a race, it is time to tapper down your workouts. I am sort of doing that I think, looking to run more days than I normally do, but far less miles per day. I usually run four days a week at 8 miles for three days and a long run on the last day. My long run this past weekend was 11.6 miles which should put me in good shape for the race. I didn't push too hard on the long run work out, ending up finishing with an average pace around 8:05. I didn't push to 95-100% on it because I want to leave everything on the table this weekend, not on a workout.
What I hope to do this week leading up to the race on Sunday is to do a good set of workout. I started with 4.5 miles today, I hope to have a work out of 4-6-6-4-2 riding up to Sunday. I might no do the 2 on Saturday or not run on Friday and to another 4.5 or something like that. I am not really sure at this point never running a half marathon before. I guess it will be a see how it goes sort of thing. As of right now my body feels really good, so I don't want to push anything too hard the week of so I don't get injured or have any glaring soreness.
Alright, so I am getting really excited about running my first half marathon this weekend. I don't know what to expect from it. The race is in Whately Ma which is where I grew up. My home Town is South Deerfield Ma which is the northern bordering town. My parents house is about a mile from the Whately Town border. So it is sort of a home coming for me to be able to do my first big time race at home. I know my parents will be there by the end of the race, hopefully between 9:30 and 9:45 for me. My wife and kids will not be attending this one for two reasons. First it is Mother's Day and it wouldn't be fair for me to force my wife to drag the kids around at 5 am to then sit around for and hour and a half or so while I run. By the way, I wasn't aware that the race was actually on Mother's Day when I signed up, I thought it was Saturday. The second reason my wife and kids will not be attending is that the race is at 8 am on Sunday morning, with packet pickup starting at 6 am. That would me leaving the house around 5 am to prepare and I am not about to wake everyone up at 5 am to, again, sit around and wait for me to run.
I really have not been thinking about the actual race very much yet, meaning visioning my run and my technique. I have been thinking a lot about how I handle the week and specifically the Friday and Saturday leading up to the race. I want to make sure I have my meals planned out and that I have my self sufficiently hydrated for the week so I don't have to over hydrate in the morning and end up needing to use the bathroom around mile six or seven. During the work week it is fairly easy to stay hydrated, I have a desk job and can keep a bottle of water by to drink and get in around 64 oz of water in daily. Weekends are where I struggle with that so this Saturday I will have to make sure I watch what I am drinking through the day. I will also be stretching more during the week, not just before and after a workout. I am going to need to do some leg stretches additionally two more times a day.
Finally in preparation I am going to create a new playlist for my run what will hopefully be 1:45 in length. I just received an email from the race director this morning stating that there is going to be over 300 people in the race this year, which is up from the 220 or so from last year. I would like to come in the top 50% of the race so my target time to keep is that 1:45 which should equal 8:10 per mile. I am pretty sure with my training that I can do that, so my goal is to finish under 1:42 which should put an average pace just under an eight minute mile. To do that I am going to be creating a new playlist with some of my favorite and most high paced music to help me keep a nice even and fast pace.
I will post a pic of my results on Twitter the day of the race when they start to display them. That way hopefully the people that wanted to know how I did can get that information pretty quickly. I will post again probably Monday after the race to chronicle how my body feels the day after and also how I feel I did in the race. Being the first one, I am just happy to able to say I did it.....something even a year ago I never thought I would do.
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