T-4. Ho-lee crap.

Such a wonderful morning today!  4 miles on the schedule, met with my weekend coach doing MTCM and with the other weekend coach (doing St. George).  We ran the route I'd picked -- 2 miles up 140 feet, and then back.  Kept the pace fairly easy but what was most important to me was realizing that 140 feet of climbing over 2 miles isn't bad at all -- at least not when you have fresh legs, certainly a different story after 21 miles.  But I CAN do it!  And I will on Sunday.  Holy crap, again. 

The best part of the morning though was going to breakfast afterwards.  Two people I run with during the week had done a 10.5 mile hill loop and then came to meet us, plus the coach doing St. George's husband.  And the place we went was featuring free cinnamon pumpkin pancakes this morning and they were delicious!  All of us with marathons in a few days had clean plates!  Though I love to run for many reasons (social time, competition with self, outdoor time, etc.), on days like this I think I just run to eat.  I even ate all the cinnamon butter with the pancakes -- the problem was that it kept melting and so I couldn't see how well it was distributed and I just kept adding more...  But it was quite a lovely start to the day. 

My remaining to-do list is getting short: 

• Print boarding passes
• Finish timesheets for month at work
• Change hotel reservation yet again
• Check husband's packing (several things I don't want him to forget, like a netflix movie for the plane, a headphone splitter, etc.)
• Decide what to do for arm sleeves -- use socks and pitch?  use good arm sleeves and pitch or carry/wear?  wear long sleeves?
• Pack "purse" type carry-on, probably more like a backpack or yoga bag
• Bake pumpkin bread to bring to cousin
• Cut out Xmas wrapping paper for the couple unwrapped gifts we're taking (one is like a watergun, so I didn't want security to have to unwrap it)
• Purchase, wash and bag grapes to eat on trip

And then tomorrow:

• Pack make-up, vitamins, etc.
• Turn off AC at home -- and maybe when we get back we won't have to turn it back on! 
• Go to Eatzi's to get sandwiches for trip on way to airport

Wow.  The time is near.  I'm starting to feel better about things.  Far from certain that I can do it, but not convinced I can't. 

I think I've elected to go with the faster pace group or go on my own.  I just don't think I can count on a negative split, and realistically, my training and predictor races suggest I should be okay going 5 minutes faster.  That's 11 seconds per mile.  Hmm... just when I thought I'd committed to the faster pace group, I decided to check how many seconds per mile that meant as I guessed about 10.  Now that I write "11 seconds per mile faster," I'm not so sure it's a good idea.  I may just keep wavering.  Or maybe start with the pace group and use them to carry me through the first 2-4 miles, falling slightly further behind each mile, which would mean I'd be about 40 seconds back at 4 miles.  Lots of time to ponder still.