Running the Rock Plan!

I finally have a plan for Sunday's marathon!  A friend I've known through book club for about 8 years is running the marathon (she also ran Chicago, which didn't have good weather this year), and I'm going to run with her for about the first half and then re-evaluate.  Her plan is to run with or near the 4:15 pace group until the half and then hopefully pick it up and finish around 4:10.  She said that would not be a PR for her, but it would be a post-child-bearing PR.  Since I am planning to drink all beer offered to me on the course, I figured I might be able to hang with her through the half, but might slow down after that.  Or I'm still toying with the idea of just running leisurely and taking photos through mile 20-something, and then running hard.  That will depend on how much beer I'm offered and how I feel.  But it would be so fun to be one of those people who are flying in the final miles.  But actually, that's more common during White Rock than most other marathons because of the relay option here.  So you have runners coming in with fresh legs around mile 20.

Saw that they are doing a new kind of relay this year -- one of high school runners (16 of them, 10M/6F) running short legs (M leg 2 miles, F leg 1 mile).  They've picked the fastest runners who are available (some have tournaments etc. this weekend).  But if each of them runs at their 1 or 2 mile PR pace, the idea is that the relay team will finish about 5 seconds behind the number 1 full marathoner!  Isn't that a neat idea?  But I do wonder how the leaders will feel about it.  I know winning a marathon involves a lot of strategy and is very complex, maybe they wouldn't like having HS kids set the pace from the outset (but there are always people who go out with the lead pack and try to set the pace too hard and then fall off), and maybe they wouldn't like sharing the lead spolight with HS kids, but I have no idea.  Just sounds like a very unique idea! 

Anyway, I have absolutely no pressure on myself for a time goal in the first marathon in a long time.  This will be my first time running with a camera, stopping to talk with my neighbor (who is coming out to cheer) for a minute, etc.  The good news is that both things that I thought might make many hours of running quite a bit more miserable than expected are becoming moot.  I was having some nagging biceps femoris pain in my left leg, and it eventually seemed to move into my groin/glut/hamstring area, but I got a much-needed reminder from Seattle Runner Girl to stretch it and use my roller on it.  Sure enough, pain seems to be gone.  And when I was stuck in the car all day on Tuesday for work, I thought I had the unmistakeable symptoms of a cold coming.  Sore throat, sneezing, headache, congestion and/or runny nose.  It must have been in my imagination or just an attempt to rebel at having to spend so much time working in one day.  Though I still have a slight headache, everything else seems fine.  Maybe the fact that I've eaten at least 4 tangerines per day since then gave me a vitamin-boost or something.  Either way, I'm quite thankful! 

Going to the expo in a few hours with hubby and one of my weekday running buddies.  Should be fun.  And then tomorrow I think I'm going to meet up with Stephanie, who is running her 45th state marathon, her 50th marathon overall, and her 27th marathon this year!  She's never been to Dallas, so I am going to try to go with her when she and her running partner go to Dealy Plaza (Kennedy assassination area), then I'll likely try to meet up with her after the race.  It will be the first time I've ever met a blogger in person I think, I had invited a blog friend to boot camp with me, but about a week before the date we'd picked, she got a new job that started early enough in the morning that it wouldn't have worked. 

Okay, onto the daily post topic thing for December: 

December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)

That's another tough one.  I think I'd pick on the night of the first anniversary of our rehearsal dinner.  Not sure if I felt "the most alive" of the entire year, but it's one of those happy and alive and perfect moments I hope to remember.  Since our wedding anniversary was on a Sunday, we decided to invite a few people over to celebrate the anniversary of our rehearsal dinner on Saturday.  We had many friends fly over to Italy for our wedding, so our rehearsal dinner was for everyone from the US and for the Italians who had parts in the ceremony (and those who just came anyway, which was cool!). 

Hubby's fave meal of all time is beer, pizza, and fries, so that was our rehearsal dinner.  We got married in a small town in Calabria and picked a restaurant in town for the rehearsal and then just ordered a variety of pizzas to be put on each table, along with baskets of fries.  It was a wonderful night, lots of people mingling (to complete the quiz I drafted, and just to catch up with friends and family).  So I thought we'd recreate a bit of that in Dallas, but without the quiz!  One of my best friends, a running friend, a former colleague, my godson's mother, etc., had made grilled pizzas at her house one night for friends and we'd enjoyed them, so she gave us the recipe.

So on my "alive" moment, I would say I was standing in our living room, drinking a beer, talking and laughing with dear friends with whom I'd celebrated with in Italy a year earlier, listening to our wedding video in the background, seeing a little slideshow of wedding pictures, feeling the warm breeze coming in from our open porch door where my sweet husband of 364 days was grilling pizzas that everyone had built with the little toppings bar we'd set up.  And after dinner we had cake!  Yum!  Just an amazing night, reminded me of all the blessings in my life.

And one running-related P.S. for today's post.  Like a weird running stats obsessed person, I went ahead and ran a little this morning.  I ran 2.6 not knowing I only needed 2.4.  Now when I hit mile marker 26 on Sunday, I will hit 1300 miles for the year, which was my resolution, and then the last .2 of the race will just be gravy on the resolution, along with any other miles I run in December!