Day 6, Week 13: Our last tempo & how to overprepare for a marathon.

Large dog and I did the final tempo run on our training schedule before my marathon next week (!!! next week!!) It was supposed to consist of:

• Two easy miles
• Three miles at "short tempo" pace, which for me is an 8:33 (also known as "warp factor 5" because I am a huge Start Trek nerd)
• A one mile cool down.

Here's what the tempo run actually looked like:

• Two easy-ish miles
• Three miles at warp factor 10 
• No cool down because I had to get inside and get ready for work to make money to pay for these marathons

OK, so maybe that was just warp factor 9.75, but seriously people--an 8:09 for the last two miles?  It didn't even feel that hard, and large dog wasn't dragging me for once.  Although he did do a lot stopping suddenly to pee and dragging me into ditches this morning, for which I justifiably gave him my best dirty look.

"Mom. I have NO REGRETS."

All this fast running yet my legs still feeling groovy is only leading me to one conclusion that I want to whisper in case I jinx myself:

My training has gone well, and I feel kind of confident about hitting my time goal.

This is the first marathon in a long, long while that I'm going in with a modicum of confidence rather than just hoping really really hard that I will hit my time goal.  And I really believe it's due to this crazy thing called "doing almost all of the runs on the plan and then writing stupid blog posts about them."  I especially think it's because I actually did all of the tempo runs....in the past, those were the runs that I would skip most readily.

Damn tempos.  So hard, but so good for your marathon goal.

Anyway, in addition to my actual running preparation, I'm doing a few other things to make sure I'm prepared for this marathon, such as:

• Obsessively checking the weather in Dallas every 10 minutes (it's supposed to rain! Argh.)
• Agonizing over whether I should wear capris or shorts
• Putting my two most motivational songs (Sia's "The Greatest" and "Unstoppable") multiple times throughout my marathon playlist so they're there when I need them (especially around miles 18 and 23)
• Sneakily buying a new pair of Brooks Launch 4s for the race because, like I've said before, I have a marathon coming up and I NEED them
• Creating a packing list that greatly exceeds the capacity of any suitcase I own.
• Eating way too much because don't want to run out of fuel during the marathon, so why not start eating for it now?

But the cat says I am overpreparing.  And he says this post is over now.  Scram.

And what have we learned from this post?

• I insert gratuitous animal pictures whenever I can.  But I'm sure you know this by now.
• I completely own my Star Trek nerdiness.  Join us--resistance is futile.
• Since I have been running most runs way too fast, I worry that I will start the marathon too fast and then blow up by mile 18.  If that happens expect a lot of sobbing selfies.
• My unwritten motto right now is EAT ALL THE THINGS.
• Overpreparation for a marathon?  No such thing.

Tomorrow's workout: My usual weights and, if you can believe it, I may go for a bike ride tomorrow since it will be in the 50s.  Stay tuned...