Ready or Not, Here I Come

Here I am in my race day outfit, posing with my arms held high. This is how I picture myself crossing the finish line. This picture tells so much of my story. Starting at the bottom, take a look at my new running shoes, size 9 and a half. I also have new socks with special cushioning designed for running. I chose to wear long pants since it will be between 40 and 50 degrees for the duration of the run. Under those pants I have a soft knee brace on each knee, just in case. Around my waist is my fuel pack. It will carry 2 bottles filled with Gatorade, my Iphone, and 5 packs of Gu. My bib has my name on it. I thought it was funny that they put first names on them. I guess to make it easier for you to make friends while you’re running. My age and sex are also on the bib in case someone feels a need to know this about me as well. I have a new head band to keep my hair out of my eyes and to keep my ears warm. I also will be wearing new panties and a new bra. I don’t want to jinx myself, but if anything bad should happen, I don’t want to feel the need to apologize to some ER doctor for the sorry condition of my under garments.

The Philadelphia Marathon is tomorrow. I’m ready as I’ll ever be. I have done the training for 18 weeks. I have to trust that it is enough. This past week was essentially a rest week. After an 8 mile run on Sunday, I only ran 4 and then 3 miles during the week. I skipped a scheduled 2 mile run. This may well be the only run I have skipped for 18 weeks. I am hoping that it wasn’t that important.

I have run 470 miles in 18 weeks. This calculates to 78 runs in 126 days, or one run every 1.6 days. The overall average distance was 6.02 miles per run. My longest run was 20 miles. The shortest would have 2 miles if I had done it. I burned up over 45,000 calories running. This is approximately 13 pounds. It would be nice to say that I lost these 13 pounds but I didn’t. My starting weight was 141, I now weigh 137. If I want to make myself feel better about the lack of weight loss, I rewind back to last November when I took up running. At that time, I weighed 147. Also, I have to admit that one of the biggest perks of the training has been the ability to eat as much as I wanted without worrying about gaining weight. I haven’t had that luxury since I was 16 years old.  

The race starts at 7:00am but with the wave start, we will probably start our race at closer to 8:30am. My goal is to finish in 5 hours. This is an average of 11: 30 minutes per mile. It’s a goal. I honestly don’t know if I can do it. My biggest fear is that my knee won’t hold up for the 26.2 miles. I think that barring that, I can find some way to finish.

Well, wish me luck. I’m excited and scared. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.