All Wound Up and Ready to Go

ORN: 4 miles, no watch, holding the reins back

I read somewhere that if one does the taper properly, one should arrive at race day almost springing with energy, the pent-up need to run after the heavy milage of training.

I'm kind of feeling like this.

The schedule had a mere 3 miles yesterday and 4 today, then two days rest. Today's 4 miler was fun, went quickly and I had to work to keep from going wide open. Then, over the noon hour at work today, we had a cancer society fund-raising 1.5 mile walk. I headed out the door, saw a couple of folks I wanted to walk with up ahead and, in street clothes, just ran for a couple hundred yards. It felt wonderful. I almost hated to catch them because it meant I had to stop running. Considering I would be in meetings all afternoon, it was a good think I quit running. The whole sweat thing would have been a problem.

Logistics call for an early-morning flight out of Indy on Friday morning. I'll spend Friday and Saturday with Nathan. From where I'm staying in Portland, I'll be able to catch the local rapid transit train downtown to the start on Sunday morning without waking Nathan up. Good thing, since I really like to get to race starts early. Which means I'll be out the door a little after 5 for the 7am start. It also helps me to go the other way, taking the train to the airport for my flight back on Monday at 6:30am.

I'm even more excited to see Nathan and his world than the marathon. He's a neat kid, making it on his own, and I get to be in his world for a couple of days.

One more cool thing...I'll meet up with some other runners for pasta on Saturday evening! Thanks to the on-line introduction by Darrell (sorry, links aren't working tonight), I'll be with Rob, Michelle and about 10 other Seattle runners. Should be fun....I'll post photos.

Thanks for all the well-wishes. Stay tuned for full race reports, with short versions and the long awful, painful versions too.

Persevere.