Last Week of Taper

Today I ran my last even remotely hard run before next Sunday's Napa Valley Marathon. The run was a 13-mile medium long run. I pushed the pace a bit over the last five miles, but ran relaxed for the first 8. I still finished with an average pace of 7:35 over the entire distance. This run gives me confidence about next week's race. I'll finish my final short, easy runs this week (the hardest run I have left is a seven miler, with two miles at marathon goal pace). Hopefully, being in San Diego this week will help keep me distracted so that I'm not fixating on the marathon. Physically, I'm ready. Not it's just a matter of executing.

Since I'll be out of town until late Friday night, this will probably be my last blog entry for a while. I'll try to enter something on Saturday after I get back from the expo. Driving up there will give me a chance to drive the course and see how hilly it will be--the hills are the only real unknown at this point (except of course for the always questionable weather). One thing I do know is that even though there are rolling hills on the course, and I trained almost exclusively in flat Alameda; the course is a net downhill, so gravity should help me more than hurt me.