In awe

Day 122

Finally, attempting my second marathon for the year this Sunday at York, PA. It should be smooth sailing. There is no rain. The temperature is at a comfortable zone , not too hot and not too cold – Spring time weather. There is no rain forecasted. We have overcast. It should be one fast race.

As for training, I took a random person’s (a running friend really) advice of running a long and couple of short weekend runs. I think my training is pretty good. I did not train for speed though. It would be interesting to see what time I will be getting. I am targeting a 5 hour finish (I know this is under-achieve for me) because I still have a few more marathons left in the year and doesn’t want to over doing it… Running at a slower pace also helps me to prepare for the Ultra next month. But if somehow I finish under 4 hours, I won’t complain.

To prepare for the ultra, people were telling me that I have to learn to run when I’m tired. For this reason, I am adding a Half Marathon the day before. I have never done this before. They call this the goofy run (Disney Marathon made it popular, a Half followed by a Full). So, I will be running a Half at St Michaels, MD on Saturday.

This race has stressed me out. It is not because of doing the race itself but the logistics of getting myself to the course. First of all, I signed up on the week of and so the registration price was through the roof. There was a $10 discount for last minute sign up but I didn’t get their promotion email until after signing up. Boo. I guess they want me to recruit others to run.

Second, all the hotels within 50 miles were booked, or mostly booked (prices are beyond what I think is acceptable). I actually booked a hotel but it was on the wrong day (Saturday instead of Friday), not sure why I made such a rookie mistake. When I realized it, I couldn’t rebook it for Friday because the place was sold out. So now I will be doing some camping out on the night before. There is a hotel available…but I didn’t want to stay there.

I don’t mind camping, but it is just the extra logistics of booking a camp site, and don’t know what to expect. Will the other campers be loud? How is the facility? Could I have a good night sleep? There are a lot of uncertainties. Also the camp site is about an hour away, plus the race organization asked us to plan to an extra hour to account for parking and traffic near the race site. I learned all about traffic in a small town in my last race at Frederick. What this means is I will be waking up at 3 AM to prep and travel to the race location. I plan to be there by 5:30. I might as well be sleeping in their parking lot!

There are still a few more stuffs I need to take care of today. I need to plan for my nutrition and fluid (ah, probably just stop by McDonalds on the way). I’m kicking myself for not doing this the night before. There are some McDonalds open at 5 in the morning, except the place I will be running at is a bit remote.

I’m tired even before the race.