T minus 117 hours

I can see why '24' stuck with that time frame.  Actually saying "117 hours to go" doesn't make me feel much as far as nerves.

Seeded Corral "Ticket"

Anyways, in the totally unnerving time frame of 117 hours (also just under 5 days - ok, that's a little more nerve awakening), I will be in the seeded corral for the Hartford Marathon.  This will be my second time running Hartford, not exactly my favorite course.  But it's rather flat and has a home town advantage.  That's why I chose it to be my first BQ attempt as well as the first of my back-to-back marathon runs; the second being Newport on Sunday.

With this last week before the races, let's check in...

Training - check!
At this point, I've done all I can for speed and endurance.  It's all about staying loose, honing in the muscle memory, and keeping away from injury.  This week will be a rough 30% of my max weekly distance with two track workouts and one if not two road runs.

Injuries - check!
For whatever reason, an older oddity has resurfaced.  My left ankle has started to feel like I'm losing control a little while I run.  This happened earlier in the Spring, but it went away on its own.  I'm hoping that with the week relaxed that it'll at least lessen.  My other thought is that I may want to look into a softer tread shoe to use for warm up, cool down, or recovery runs.  A few local runners I know use softer shoes for those runs and my problem may be with the relatively non-forgiving thickness of my shoes.  We'll see what happens.

Nutrition - in the works.
I've decided to give a try to the carbo-loading cycle.  I'm taking 5 days on a low carb diet and then 3 days on a slightly higher than normal carb diet.  My experience with paleo the second time around proved that this type of swing in carb intake certainly helps with workouts, so if it's done right, it should work on racing as well.  Let's just hope I time it right.  haha.

Otherwise, my race day nutrition is still up in the air.  My typical goal is a gel every 3 miles, but it didn't work at Hogsback.  My ideal might be Skratch or Heed drink, but I don't want to carry it.  So I may just go with gels and the on course water and Gatorade.  Ugh!  My saving grace is that I finally got back into hydration-less runs on this training cycle.  I know I can go 6-7 miles at goal pace before I start needing nutrition, so if anything, I may just space things out a bit more than usual.

If only I had some minions

I could stash at certain checkpoints

with my choice nutrition!!

Weather - check!
There is a 100% of weather.  Hooray!  At this point, Saturday looks clear with a 49-65 degree day (awesome!!) and Sunday looks like 30% chance of rain with a 51-61 degree day.  Overall, those look like nearly perfect conditions!!  Hopefully it doesn't change much.

Outfit - Eh!
Due to my earlier... well, issues, I tried a different outfit for the recent Hogsback Half Marathon and that didn't work either.  In the end, I think I'm going to go with the running standby; my black running shorts and a hat.  I may use the arm sleeves, but I'm unsure.  My only concern is how I want to carry my gels.  I had hoped the tri shorts would work so I could stash them in the pockets.  I might just have to use the race belt as before.  I just always end up with wear spots on my skin since I insist on going shirtless.  

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Questions
1.  What is your taper training like?
Do you scale down your training to smaller workouts or do you have specific workouts that you like to switch to?

2.  Have you ever had you ankle somewhat lose propioception (feel) on you during a run?

3.  What is the perfect weather to run in?


DREAM.  BELIEVE.  ACHIEVE.