The first signs of spring...

Nah, not really, but tonight I declared it a non-training night and went shopping. Yep, went down to the German equivalent of Home Depot and picked up a portable scaffolding that was on sale. That rain trough along the edge of the roof of the house is now within reach! Come spring weather, mild-mannered Running Jack will transform into Super Handyman Jack able to leap tall buildings with a single bound (with help of the new scaffolding at least ;-) I will at least be able to strip down and repaint the rain trough and do some other touch-ups.

But in the meantime I still have a couple miles to run. Tomorrow and Thursday I want to run my 14K/8.7M trail, once easy, once a little quicker. Saturday is a medium long run on the schedule, somewhere around 2 ½ hours. If the weather stays warm I am tempted to run a little further, but we’ll see.

Marathon Countdown

So 4 ½ weeks until 'M' day - one long run left to complete, then some tapering. My strategy? Well, run as fast as I can without bonking ;-)

Actually it will depend an awlful lot on the weather, M-day, March 12th, is still within the range of some miserable winter weather. Too cold and Jack goes slow, ice is not nice, and too much snow and nobody knows. I would like to finish in 4:15:00 or less, and I will certainly do my best to achieve this.

In the way of excuses I can only offer that this will be my third marathon in 10 months, which at my age (grandpa) and level of experience (first year of marathoning) is a lot. I have not been running the hills as I was doing while training for my 2nd marathon and I think I will pay the price on race day.

On the positive side maybe race day will be a nice spring day, my breakfast cereal will be spiked with high-energy pills, my ego will be on turbo-boost and I will fly through the air with the greatest of ease and land at the finish line in a sub-4. Anything is possible, right :-)

My only fear is tapering, tapering and nothing but the tapering ;-)