Long Run Sunday: A Race Prep Run

As you can see from my Marathon Training program a 10-miler was on the books today.  It's the last 'long run' before the big day, and general wisdom is there's nothing I can do the week before the marathon to make myself faster next Sunday.  That means this is a fun-run.  I decided to do my all-time favorite route ever.  Read all about it here.

Also, in the spirit of 'nothing new on marathon day' I decided to test my pharmaceutical interventions for the race.  It's not a secret that, um, intestinal distress has plagued training this year and I really wanted to have a plan for that on race day.  (I kept thinking back to last year and what I did. That race started at 1030.)

A long sunrise woke me up this morning.  (I love this clock!)  I got up, had a small snack, another thing I need to figure out before race day, and took some drugs.  I did research last night and made sure that Imodium and Ibuprofen won't do bad things to each other in my stomach.  I packed my Gu (one pack, ha!) and a bit of water, then off I went.

It was quite chilly and I was glad I had long sleeves.  Even though the sun was up, there was still dew on the grass.  The sun was putting on quite a show as well.  I made it all the way to the falls before I realized that today is the Women Run the Cities race.  (I was running a 20-miler last year during that race.  I used a bunch of their water stops that time.)  Luckily, although I saw the starting line, the race course didn't intersect my path at all.

Down the awesome hill.  Are those horses behind me?  Nope, it's just a cross country team, Hamline's possibly because a couple of them were wearing shirts that said HU (or U of H, I can't remember).  The boys came by first and there were lots of them.  Then the girls came down.  There weren't as many and they sounded more like deer than horses.

Up the awesome hill.  Yeah! for week 2 of me running all the way up the thing.  As you can imagine, I've spent some time looking at the Marathon course map and the elevation change information on it.  Go here for more information.  For the past week or two I've started to become wildly intimidated by miles 21-23 (River Parkway up to Cretin, then to Summit which goes up for some time).  I studied the elevation gain and it's only a bit more than this big stinking hill I run up.  (It's much further into the course, but nowhere near as steep as this thing.)

At the top of awesome hill is the prettiest spot in the whole city.  I think I'll take dad there next week so he can see how much the leaves have changed since he was there a few weeks ago.  That's where I stopped to have my Gu Chomps.  (I didn't even eat them all.)

Then back by the river and the falls.  I got to see what must have been runners after finishing the 5k.  (There's no way any of those people had just run 10 miles.)  Way to go ladies!  And, shock of shocks, I was still running up on my toes.  I actually was up on my toes pretty much the rest of the way home (as opposed to the heel-strike gait).

When I got home, I still wasn't having, um, distress.  This is Great! I thought I had a plan for race day.  So I changed and headed off to the KingField Farmer's Market, you know, the one I couldn't find last week.  I wanted to go and try this vendor's eggs from pasture fed hens.  (Trust me, once you've had eggs from pasture fed hens, you'll understand.)  It's a tiny market but everyone there was really nice.  I found the vendor and got my eggs.  In a carton that said "Virginia" on it.  WTF!  I'm assuming/hoping the cartons are just re-used.  (It's not even like they can do a fake out and say they're from Virginia Minnesota.)  I also got a few veggies I missed at the co-op yesterday.  I was sad to see no one had brussel sprouts for me to buy.

I came home and started to make breakfast lunch.  I think all the color drained from my face and I was standing at the stove.  I started to get hot and got a fairly big stomach cramp.  There's those side effects the box warned me about.  Two pills was too damn much.  It's good to get the dosage issues worked out before race day too I guess.  After laying on the couch for a few minutes I was able to go cook and have my lunch.  The jury is still out on the eggs, although I wasn't as immediately impressed as I'd hoped I would be.

My choices for the day appear to be watching one or another Minnesota sports team play a sports team from Detroit.  So far, it doesn't appear to be a good day for Mr Favre. Doesn't appear to be a great day for the Twins either.