Sharpening the Spear

Today, on a drizzly, misty morning, we gathered up nervously for 4000m at somewhere just south of MGP, on the Zilker soccer field course. Gilbert gave us some encouraging words and laid out the entire week for us, and with that, we were off to Zilker. I was amused to find that I was in the lead group going over to Zilker today, whereas on Thursday, with that bunch, I was in the very last group getting to AHS. Different groups, for sure! :-)

There was a lot of nervous talk about the marathon, about our strategies for nutrition this week, for pacing during the race, and everything in between. So far, the long-range weather forecast is looking very good, but that could change in an instant here in Texas.

We did the drills, and as is somewhat traditional, they got shortened in distance again this week of the marathon. No one declares anything, it just always happens this way. Kenny met us at the top of the course, gave us the details, and pretty soon, we were off. The non-AT&T people were doing faster 1000m repeats (and more of them). We did two loops of the 2000m course, aiming for MGP or something just faster than that.

I ran with Jennifer and Colleen, and we naturally went out slightly too fast. We got it figured out for the rest of the morning, though, and ended up with about 2.4 miles at 8:22/mile. Snappy enough to get the legs to turn over, but not so fast that we used up too much of our reserves. I ran back to RunTex with Frank and Alex, among others, and we had more fun talk on the way. 6 striders at Auditorium Shores later, and we were done. I counted about 5.8 miles of total running, including all the pre- and post-game festivities.

I stuck around and did some stretching, and there were a good number of folks hanging around for that.

We are all a little twitchy nowadays, and every ache or twinge causes us to do a mild freakout, but I know that's mostly Taper Madness setting in. We're all reporting feeling a little bit of the heavy leg syndrome, where our legs are just reacting to their dramatically reduced workload.

I don't get to do Gazelles the rest of the week, until Saturday's little 30 minute jog and stretching, so it was oddly tough for me to say goodbye to everyone today. We've put so much time into this thing, as a group, and we've come to know each other so much better on all those long runs and workouts...it's exciting to be at the edge of the big race, but at the same time, it's a little sad that our little running family will change after Sunday. There will be some folks that decide that this was enough marathoning for them, and they'll go back to training on their own, while some may switch training groups or focus on triathlons. There will be plenty of people sticking around for the Spring 5K/10K/Half marathon semester of Gazelles, but we'll be saying goodbye to people, that's for sure.