Am I ready?

As of this morning it had been almost an entire week with no running. The last two weeks have been more of a cliff than a taper. However, I think that my feet and legs are much better for the rest and I know I am not loosing fitness as fast as my psyche imagines. I had to get at least one run in before hitting the start line this weekend at minimum to see how everything feels. I decided to just do an easy four miles this morning. Right from the get go, I could tell that no matter what my feet may think, my legs are ready to go. I hit the first mile and glanced at my watch to see that I was under 8min/mile. Whoa, Nellie! That may be an easy run pace for some people, but I am certainly not one of them. I slowed it down a bit in the second mile to hit the half-way around 16:20. Still a bit faster than I wanted to go so I stopped and made myself stretch for a while. Since this was supposed to be about mental preparation on the way back I tried to put my mind into "long run" mode; slow, relaxed, "run forever" pace, imagining that I am running the first part of the course prepping for the initial hill. While the run was barely enough to warm up, it did let me do a check over all my foot/leg issues and it made me feel like I was still a runner. The hard part now is resisting the temptation to start putting in a bunch more runs before the race. I keep reminding myself that with the 50 miler, I only need a few extra miles for the week to keep it within my "normal" training mileage.

Mentally, I am working on running the course over in my mind. I am a big fan of visualization as I think it helps with mental preparation as well as helps keep my nerves calm. I can "see" the course pretty clearly through Redwood and even have a basic plan for how I will run it. Beyond that is a little bit murky as I have only run the section out to Tildon once. I know in my head that if I can get back to Redwood feeling OK, I should be set. Even though at that point I will be running longer than I ever have before, I can see pretty much every mile in my head from there to the finish. Actually, the last few miles aren't very clear since I've only run them in the dark, but I know that the finish line will pull me towards it once I get close enough.

Now I just need to obsess about my gear and I'll be ready to go.