Taper week meets Halloween week

Remind me next year to do my fall marathon well BEFORE Halloween week. I am finding that it is difficult to resist the Halloween candy and I'm not burning as much of it off running. I'm up about 4 pounds from Chicago. Although not too critical, I will be interested in seeing how it all plays out.

Monday I ran 5 @ 9:29 and Tuesday another 5 @ 9:34. Wednesday I did REALLY light elliptical for 30 mins. My heart rate didn't go over 90 and I didn't break a sweat. But the gentle motion helped to work out kinks in the legs.

Thursday morning was really cold - 41F with strong winds so it felt like 35. It is supposed to be that cold or colder and slightly windy on Sunday. I haven't run in the cold in such a long time that I wasn't sure what I should wear. So I decided to do my final 3-mile run as a race day simulation. I wore my supply belt around my waist, pinned gels to my shorts - yes SHORTS, donned my hat, gloves and long-sleeve tech shirt and ventured over to the Summit MS track (I'm leery of running streets in the dark now after falling)

All in all I was surprised at how warm I was after running the first mile as long as I was out of the wind. Near the south end zone the wind kicked up and I started to shake in my shoes. I think I'm going to not risk it and wear my running tights to make sure my legs stay warm for the 4 to 4-1/2 hours I'll be out in the elements.

All of the training is over. Tomorrow morning I leave. Sunday is race day.

Just for yucks I decided to add up how much I've run since I started in December. Drum roll please ... A grand total of 1067.5 miles. That's over 40 marathons and 175 hours of training. I've burned over 144,000 calories ... that's over 41 pounds. Interestingly, I ran one third of the miles the first 5 months prior to the Indy Mini, the next third the next 3 months and the last third these past 2-1/2 months. That really puts it in perspective to me as to how much I've ramped up the training for a marathon versus just a half.

Unless something major happens this will be the last blog entry until Sunday night when I post my results of the GRM.

Later