famous last words

For those of you who haven’t been hanging on this blog’s every utterance (shame, shame) and who are also not up on events in the Melbourne running scene, this Sunday is the Melbourne Marathon.

That means, between now and next I write there will be, not only a couple of days, but at least 42.195k.

Scary uh?

Yes and no. On the one hand, there’s always a bit of anxiety at this point in the preparation. The thing is, compared to Wednesday’s feverish dashing about in search of my race shirt, this feels positively serene. We’ll see how I feel on Saturday night.

The weather forecast looks OK at the moment, I’ve been mercifully free of colds and sickness up until this point, and whatever minor niggles I’ve had seemed to have sorted themselves out during the taper.

So I’m all set to go.

Best of luck to everyone on the day, especially if it’s your first time.

Race plan
Last time I ran this distance, in the absence of any form of pacer, the plan was bloody simple - run the first km in 4 minutes 30, then repeat for as long as possible. It got a bit ropey towards the end, particularly into the headwind, but I pretty much got there. I finished in 3.12, which was only 2 minutes out.

This time, I have a couple of plans, but they’re very much dependent on conditions, general feelings and god-knows what.

The main plan is to enjoy it, strange as that may sound. First time around I was just shit-scared the whole time. The second time was a rather grim, dour, lonely kinda race. This time, I just want to enjoy running, and the course, and the crowd. That being said, I’ll enjoy the experience a lot more if I beat my last time.

Running
I did just over 8k yesterday lunchtime, at a very easy pace. Tonight I’ll go for a brief 5k jaunt around the local streets near me, mainly ’cause I need to wear the new shirt at least once.