The Final Countdown

Unfortunately, this morning the Europe song "The Final Countdown" appeared on my internal radio station, and it stuck all morning long. However, it fit, in a weird way, with this week's Gazelles workouts. We're just ticking down the hours until 7:00 am CST on Sunday, when we toe the line for our little 26.2 mile jaunt through Austin.

Today was pretty nippy, but a still manageable 34 degrees, crisp and clear. We dressed appropriately, and headed out for Zilker Park for the now traditional Monday workout before a marathon, 3000m at MGP. Nice and easy warmup run, with Alex and Brian, as we brought up the rear of the whole troupe, 9:30 pace or thereabouts. We were passed by Mason and all the faster Gazelles while we were cruising along, just to give him a shout out. :-) Drills were drilled, and then we got G's last advice, to do either 3 x 1000m or 3000m straight at or slightly faster than MGP. We took off, and we were lucky enough in my pace area to have one of the Official Freescale Pace Group Leaders, Jason, with us. He was practicing his 3:45 MGP with us, and we might end up being his group on race day. A lot of my normal peeps took off faster, but we enjoyed a nice comfortable cruise around the Zilker loop, hitting 3000m at about 8:25/mile pace, slightly faster than the 8:35/mile that fits with 3:45 marathon goals. Nicely done.

The cooldown run was quicker, maybe 9:10/mile range, but still nice. We are all nervous, and that is expressed in the chatter that passes for calm discussion of the upcoming race. Finished it off with 5 x 100m striders, and it was a day. 5.8 miles.

It's both comforting and scary to be at this point in the training program. From here on out, there's really nothing going on that's going to bother us at all. Tomorrow, a truly easy 30 minutes or so here in the 'Hood, followed by my last pre-race gym visit, much abridged. Wednesday is 20 easy minutes with the Gazelles, followed by 20 minutes of strides and jogging, and that's pretty much it. Thursday and Friday are full days off, and Saturday is 20 minutes easy plus the usual stretching and pep talk. Fun and scary at the same time. Current weather forecast for Sunday looks pretty promising, maybe even perfect. Fingers crossed.

Tick, tick, tick, ...