Another Day...Another Marathon..

It's 2 days from the Fox Valley Marathon. Debi and I are going to pick up our packets tonight. I'm not looking forward to driving through rush hour, but it will be nice to have everything early. As I may or may not have mentioned before - I'm sponsored for this race! One of my company's accounts comes in to get banners that I make him every month, his establishment, Thirsty Fox Pub, is 3 blocks from the start and finish.... He had mentioned to me before that he would sponsor me in a race - So once I saw that the Fox valley Marathon was so close to him, I decided to ask... He said yes, and is going to have a post race party - so that is where I will be going after the race for some french fries, a chicken sandwich or/and pizza. The race starts at 7am and pretty much follows the river for 13 miles, crosses the river, and then follows it back on the other side back to the start/finish. It's a very flat course compared to probably all of my other races. Perhaps comparable to the Trail Breaker race.

I think I am looking forward to the race. I have had pretty good runs all week - I ran monday - Thursday, 30 miles total. Taking today and tomorrow off.... Will be nice to sleep in on another Saturday, but will be weird to have Judah off running and me not... I think I will drink lots of coffee, watch a cartoon and make pancakes. Now that sounds like a good Saturday morning.

My plan is to run with the 3:50 pace group for the first half, and try to make my way up to a faster pace half way through.

Things I'm going to do differently:
New Newton shoes - 40 miles on them or so

Not run with my camel back - I"m going to run with a small strap with a pouch for my Blocks.... just drink the water and gatorade on the course

Not have music. I think it will help me focus.

Not drink any wine the night Before the race

Things I'm doing the same
Trying to eat lots of carbs
Get extra Sleep
Get to the race early

That's it I guess... Marathon & < #9 here I come.

I've never liked running in heat

 This week was hot. Way hotter than it has been. We have had a very mild summer so far. Great running weather, but this week, August caught up to us. It was in the 70's even at 4:40am. Pretty lame when we were used to 60's even upper 50's. In fact I even got hives after a run one morning in August. I only get hives when it's cold out, I go running, and then I take a warm shower. Cold induced hives. Strange I know. Any way...

I was really discouraged from my race pretty much all week feeling bad about it and being hard on myself. Calling myself names like week and pathetic, a horrible runner... Sometimes I take it upon myself to be my own drill Sargent. hoping that if I insult myself enough i'll somehow shape up and be awesome, but it never works. It usually just makes me depressed and angry.Maybe I should try being nicer to myself...But then maybe myself should stop being a pathetic quitter at mile 10 of a half marathon... I suppose that race is in the bast now - just like the rest of them. I need to forgive myself and move on. Someday I WILL be good at racing. with 3 half marathons, 5 marathons, and 3 50k's I really think I should already be somewhat good at racing. But the fact is, i'm not, and that's just how it is. So onward I go into training. Like I was saying it was hot all week, this week our group split up, half of them went to run in Minooka on the I&M trail, and the rest of us went to starved rock. I was happy we choose Starved rock, we were all on the fence for a while... but it ended up being a hard hot run - we all ran out of water and struggled because of how hot and humid it was. We made it though, and it ended up being around 21 miles when we only needed 18... I figured it made up for all the walking we did. Mike ended up getting a really sore knee, and the rest of us used that as an excuse to walk more with him and not leave him behind... Turns out the other group had a really hard run as well, as did several others we heard from. It just was not a good running weekend I think...
This week i'm hoping to run better now that it is cooler. I ran 3 miles in chicago yesterday, it was really fun... I use to live in chicago and really enjoyed getting on the lake trail again. This morning Deb, Judah, myself and mike and Angela ran our 7.5 mile "kit rout" I named it that because we start from Mike and Angela's house, go straight down and then kind of doing a triangle, then come back the same way... Its a fun rout, and was a good run. I have a track work out or a hill work out this week, I forgot what... Almost looking forward to it.