No Mileage Report

I feel like the day or so before a marathon, I usually do a post recapping my weekly mileage over the training season.  It's to remind myself how hard I've worked and to give myself a bit of confidence.  I did a post like this last year before I got my first Boston-qualifying (BQ) race time at Twin Cities.  And I did that post earlier this year before I ran Boston and got my "re-Q".  I would go back and count how many weeks I had mileage in the low 30s, in the upper 30s, in the low 40s, in the upper 40s, and even into the 50s when I trained for Boston. 

But there doesn't seem to be much point this year.  When I hurt my calf, I reduced me running to 3 days a week.  That kept my mileage frequently in the 30s, but even when my calf healed, I didn't pick it back up to my usual 4-6 days of running per week.  My mileage never really increased as it should have.  Why not?  Who knows?  I was a little afraid of reinjuring it, but I was also just lazy.  It was fun to sleep in on Saturdays, and just do boot camp on the other days.  The other big issue is that when my calf was hurt, I gave myself permission to slack at boot camp.  I did very little cardio and I think lost a lot of fitness over those few weeks. 

Likely I will pay on Sunday.  The predicted high is 85, and I think it's going to be ugly.  I suppose the upside is that even if I'd worked my @ss off and done tons of high mileage weeks and lots of speedwork, it still would have been ugly weather and the race likely would have been even more disappointing for me.  At least my expectations aren't high!

There are a few people I've been running with almost every day I've run this season.  One is this guy who's training for his first marathon.  He trained once before but got injured after his first 16 miler, but he's doing great this year and I'm super excited for him.  He's ALMOST young enough to be my kid -- I guess if I'd had him when I was about 13, but he's younger than my baby brother and really seems like a kid to me.  Just out of school, figuring out the job thing, etc.  The other morning, he asked me what my goal time was for San Antonio.  I told him that was a very personal question.  Why not just ask me what I weigh or how many guys I've hooked up with!  He laughed and said he didn't know it was so personal.  So we made a deal (this was before I knew the forecast) that if I accurately predicted my finish time w/in 2 minutes either way, he'd pace me in a 5k (he's fast!).  We didn't figure out what happened if I don't finish w/in 2 minutes, but I think it will involve my doing some baking for him. 

I went ahead and predicted my finish time at a very slight PR (about 2 minutes). 

Now that I've seen the weather, I think all bets are off.  I don't even know if it would be smart to start at that pace, maybe I'm better off running the whole thing at an easy pace. 

Oh well, we'll see how it goes I guess, how I feel, how hot it actually is at the start, etc.

I'm considering making what also could be a potentially huge mistake.  I might wear brand new shoes.  I wear the same brand and style always (Brooks Glycerine).  I bought a new pair not that long ago to wear during the race and I realized they've moved into the next year of the shoes.  They should structurally be the same as what I'm used to wearing, but every once in a while, there will be a change -- 50/50 on whether that change will be for the better or for the worse for me. 

I bought those shoes and planned to do a couple test runs in them, but somehow never seemed to have time.  The shoes were up in their box in my closet, and when I was getting ready to run, I was on the first floor and usually in a hurry.  So I haven't tried them out yet.  Hmm...  I really wish I had b/c the last couple runs in my current shoes I really started to get the "time for new shoes" feeling.  These shoes (the pair that I've been wearing) were my brand new shoes for Boston, and they carried me through the bulk of this training season (all my long runs, and maybe about 1/3 of my weekday runs).  So they're due to be retired.  But when?  Retired now or retired after 26 more miles on Sunday? 

Risk it and wear brand new shoes?  Or risk it by wearing safe but worn out shoes?  Aye, I just don't know...

This weekend is going to be interesting...