Into the Final Week

The beautiful autumn days just keep rolling in, with the leaves about at their peak. Sun was strong and the temps mild. I slept in instead of my usual Saturday morning custom of joining the 8:15 folks at the Art Museum (did anybody come out this morning?) and instead biked down to the Art Museum to meet the 9:30 crowd. Alot of folks came out, including a good mixture of folks who had run their marathons and others who were tapering for Philly next Sunday. This created a real up mood as folks were either recounting tales or anticipating their turn up.

I ran with five others, JW and KG who are both running Philly next week and hoping for BQs, CS who ran Marine Corps, and RL and a friend of his from out of town. Running the drives was easy at an 8 minute pace and drifting back and forth and lazily talking about this and that. It was just a great morning to be out and running. Then at mile 6 I bid farewell to this group and turned around to retrace those 6 miles at marathon pace. MP was 6:05, and I finished those 6 miles in 36:18. Not a hard workout at all, however, the miles started at 6:00 and ended at about 6:08. That was fine, as this reassured me that I should start next weeks marathon at a 6:10 pace and NOT any faster.

Well, the workouts keep getting easier from here on in. I'm already saying, probably more boldly than the superstition in me is comfortable with, that barring anything unforeseen or unfortunate that 2:45 will go down. The anticipation is now building, as its officially the final week.