Whew!

Well, it's all done. Many things went "not quite according to plan" today, but I adapted. Several more things went exactly according to plan... No adaptation needed. Altogether, I ended up having an awesome race!

Thanks to everyone sending congratulations, well wishes and such! I'll post a write up in due time, when I have some time with a real keyboard.

Visualization

I've been doing a lot of race visualization (otherwise known as daydreaming), with the help of Google Earth and the little "street view" guy. He's kind of cool. Just drop him on some corner to see what it looks like. Then of course, you have to stitch all that stuff together into some kind of movie. In my head, it goes almost exactly like this:

http://vimeo.com/17492219

Well.. except in my head, I run the other direction down the Ben Franklin parkway. And I don't plan to hurdle any park benches in front of Independence Hall, or at any other point in the race. The children are taller, and I am sad that I forgot my sweat band at home. In other words, it's exactly the same, but completely different.

Even so, chances are pretty good that I'll have "Gonna Fly Now" stuck in my head, starting now and until the race is over.

Change of Plans

So you make a plan, and a major part of the plan is that you plan to stick to the plan...

I received an email from the race organizers with several tidbits of information. The tidbit that caught my eye was:

WE RECOMMEND ARRIVING NO LATER THAN 5:00 AM  TO CLEAR THE HEIGHTENED SECURITY SCREENING AND TAKE CARE OF PERSONAL NEEDS BEFORE THE 1^ST START. DO NOT COUNT ON START DELAYS. 

My plan was to wake up at 4:30 on race morning and spend the next hour-ish getting dressed, eating, and "taking care of personal needs" in a leisurely fashion, in the comfort of a warm hotel room with a clean toilet. Then I was going to walk over to the start area and plan to arrive before 6 - plenty of time to drop off a bag, take care of any last-minute personal needs and get all lined up and ready to go.

But it sounds as though the plan will have to change a little. Maybe beef up the expendable pre-race warm layer, anticipate standing in a few long lines... not to mention waking up a bit earlier. No big deal. In the grand scheme of things, this is the easiest kind of planning change, since there's plenty of notice. It's the ones in the middle of the race when your brain is mush and you can't think straight that are a little trickier. That should be part of the plan too. Hope for no surprises, but expect the unexpected.

The other tidbits of information in the email that I didn't already know were my bib number and corral color. I'll be in the "maroon" corral, which is cool because maroon is in the top ten of my all-time favorite color names. It just sounds cool. Mah-rOOn. I realize that >50% of the Austinites reading this now are not amused by that, and in fact may even despise me for suggesting that maroon is actually part of the visible spectrum. I have no verbal response for that.

My bib number of course, allows me to start playing Chris's super-superstitious numerology game. 491 is another super lucky number, as usual. 1 and 9 are lucky right off the bat. And 4-1 = 3, so that covers three of the four lucky numbers. 9-4+1 = 6... they're all there! Furthermore, 4 x 9 x 1 = 36! And 4/91 = 0.(043956), 0+4+3+9+5+6 = 27, then 2+7 = 9! If you keep going and add another repeat, you get 54, and 5+4 = 9! A *third* round gets you 81, and 8+1 = (wait for it...) 9!  It should come as no surprise that if you add 1,369 repeats together, you get 36,963, whose digits add up to 27, and then we're back to 2+7 which is 9. I'm still amazed that I always get such good numbers!

Enough silliness. I am going to go revise my plan.

Checklist in Progress

• Train, train, train - [97%]

• Review old race plans - [Done]

• Review old race reports - [Done]

• Write race plan - [Done]

• Obsess about things over which I have absolutely no control - [30%]

• Obsess about things over which I have complete control - [75%]

• Obsess about things which are technically someone else's problem - [45%]

• Pack my stuff - [2%]

• Start second guessing myself - [  ]

• Don't sleep through any alarms on November 17th - [  ]

• Race! - [  ]

• Celebrate! - [  ]

Sandbags Not Included

Philly minus four weeks, but who's counting? (answer: me)

People have started asking me what my time goal is for this race. The answer I have been giving is "Well, I don't have a time goal." Depending on who I am talking to, that answer is received in a number of different ways.

The non-runners, at least the ones who know me and are familiar with my running habits, usually ask something like "Well, don't you usually have to have some kind of goal pace for these things?" And then I explain that yes, that's how I've run these in the past. But somewhere about a year ago, I got the idea that I wanted to try training for and running a Marathon by effort instead of time. I want to run based on how I feel and run the best race I can, and not focus so much on a specific number at the end - or the specific numbers in the middle, for that matter.

Nearly all of those non-runners go "Ok... that makes sense. Cool! Good luck!"

The runners though, their follow-on question is usually a bit more variable. It ranges from "Oh, so you're just doing it as a long run, then?" to "Uhh.. what?" Then I go through the same follow-up spiel about effort vs time. At the other end of that, a few of them take the non-runner response path above.

A surprising number however, say something like "Ah... So I guess that's easier then, if you don't have a goal." or "So you're going to take it easy?" or my favorite "Ah.. so then if you have to bail out at the end, it isn't so bad."

That's when one of the more dramatic voices in the back of my head throws his arms to the sky, drops to his knees and screams "WHY?!?!?! OH WHY??? NOBODY UNDERSTANDS MEEEEE!!!" And he breaks down into one of those hitching, full-body, slow-motion sobbing fits, tearing at his shirt and his hair (yeah.. some of the voices in the back of my head have hair long enough to "tear at", go figure).

Meanwhile, on the outside I am patiently explaining that yes, I do have a goal, no it won't be easy, and bailing out is not part of the plan. My goal is to go out and run a fantastic race. I used the word race there - I am running a race. I am not going to be racing against a clock this time. I am going to be racing against some 12,000 other people. I intend to beat as many of them to the finish line as I can (even the ones I know and love, sorry!) There will be no taking it easy.. no sandbagging. I am just going to approach the strategic portion of it from a different angle than I have in the past. I believe I can run a better Marathon this way.

By this point, my internal drama queen is curled up on the ground in the fetal position, tears and snot running freely, mumbling something about a jelly doughnut and the pentagon. But I've managed a couple tentative ok's from that other runner, perhaps a few nods. They might not completely buy it, but at least the idea is no longer dismissed.

This is not a new or novel concept. Lots of people do it. It's just new to me. It is kind of an experiment I've been running on myself since mid-spring. It seems a little foreign when there's usually weeks or months of focus on the big, hairy, acronym-worthy "Marathon Goal Pace". Instead, I have been focused on how to read my body and gauge my effort. It's different, which is interesting and exciting. It might completely backfire on me, but I won't know until I try.

Car2Go Austin Marathon Relay 2013

The one thing that's been consistent about this race since 2005 is that there's always a surprise. This year had a few of them.

For one, the weather was fantastic. As far as that goes, the weather all weekend was fantastic. It was a nice little taste of what's coming, neatly packaged with one foot in summer and the other in fall. The weather has never been like that for this race. I won't delude myself into thinking the heat is over until next year, but it was a good reminder that it will, in fact, cool off. Pretty soon I'll be complaining about forgetting my gloves or some crazy stuff like that.

Secondly, for the first time in the history of this relay race, there was a baton involved. That's right - an actual tube, carried by each runner through their entire leg, and handed off to the next person on the team. It was the timing chip for your team, too. In years past, there have been a couple variations on wrist bands being used as batons, which gave the general feeling of a relay. And then there was last year's race, which did away with the concept of a "relay" altogether (we'll leave it at that). This time around though, we got batons. Some teams got creative and decorated it with flowing ribbons, or made a sling that they could use to "wear" it with. We just ran with it. I was a skeptic at first, but after half a mile or so with a baton in my hand, I felt empowered. Not only that, the race was split into six legs of equal distance, so every runner ran the same course...

...except for the first leg (which I happened to be running). That was the third surprise. Though I guess it really shouldn't have been a surprise - for some reason this event always seems to have a distance snafu on some part of the course. Somewhere between the first and second legs, they got it fixed, but all (or at least most) of the first leg runners ran a little shorter. We ran about 3.9 miles while the other five legs had 4.37 ish.

Our team (the SiLabs SloMos) placed 13th in the "Just for Fun" category with a combined 3:27:16. And it was fun! Between the beautiful weather, running around like a track star with a baton in my hand, and catching up with a couple good friends, It was great. I also got to run fast, which if you read my last post, is very exciting these days. During my not-quite-four-mile portion of the race, I contributed 23:47 to our total time. For me, right now, I think falls into the realm of "hauling buttock". My buttocks have both reserved the right to disagree with me tomorrow, but for now all three of us concur that it was a good day.

The hardest runs are the easy runs

Perhaps "hardest" is the wrong word to use there. They're mentally difficult. At this point in these training cycles, an interesting thing begins to happen. It's all in my head. I get less and less excited about going on the runs that are marked on the schedule as "easy" days. Yet I get more and more excited about doing the runs that are considered "hard". I look forward to the quality workouts as they get increasingly difficult, and the long uns as they get increasingly longer.

Steady state? Tempo? Hills? Cool! 1.5 hours of running before dawn on a Saturday, with another 1.5 after the sun comes up? Let's go! Forty-five minutes "easy"? Ugh.

I'm not sure why this happens. There's always a threshold where the harder workouts just get really rewarding and the others turn into something very chore-like.

Thankfully, I've had a fair amount of company on many of those runs this time, including "runnin' the dog" with Adam an Moses on Sunday mornings, "lunchtime buddy" Brent on the T-days, and even "surprise guest" Gundy on a couple of random occasions. The company makes those runs much more palatable.

Now with all that company, the only run that's a (mental) challenge is the Monday "medium long run". It's hard to fit that one into the schedule. Lately, it has been 10 miles which have to be completed before ~6:15 AM. That means the alarm has to be set for roughly waytoofreakin'earlytobewakinguponaMondaymorningo'clock.

It's shorter tomorrow, so I am going to accept a couple additional hours of precious sleep and run at lunch. If that doesn't work out for whatever reason, I will go tomorrow evening. However, it goes back to normal next week.

So I'm looking for volunteers! Anyone want to wake up well before the buttcrack of dawn to keep me feeling accountable and motivated? You don't really have to run - you can ride a bike if you want. Or a Razor scooter. Anything without a motor. But you have to show up, or give at least 24 hours notice. It doesn't work if you flake at the last minute. Think about it. Yes, you. Did the crickets outside just get louder? Well anyway, time for bed.