Two weeks til Chicago

Well, it's finally taper time before the big race. I realized that this might be the part of the training cycle that I'm the most unsure about how to do, especially for a marathon. Formulating everything else throughout this cycle has been pretty simple, because the philosophy of all training is basically the same, regardless of what distance you're training for. Now, I need to consider the physical demands of the marathon and taper from a little farther out than I'm used to. This will probably bring some anxiety and insecurity, but I know that it's much easier to overtrain the last 2 weeks before any big race than undertrain.

One big update that I haven't said anything about here is how I raced at Philly. The answer, as I suspect for pretty much everyone not named Deena, is "frustratingly." The weather did not cooperate, and within a two week stretch that had great weather every day that Sunday just happened to be warm and foggy. 67 degree dewpoint was the official data at race time on the nearest weather station to the Art Museum that I could find online. As a result the race was pretty miserable and disappointing. After being immediately upset after finishing, I asked other guys how they felt in the race and no one was very pleased with it. I also did some perusing of the results of the guys around me and pretty much everyone ran well off their PRs. 

I estimated that I had a good shot at PRing and thought that low 1:05s was a distinct possibility, assuming an ideal day. I ran 1:07:16, which was 95 seconds slower than I ran last year. That was pretty consistent with other results that I found so I can pretty safely rationalize that result and chalk it up to the weather. Besides the disappointing time, I felt that it was a great workout for Chicago. 

Back to Chicago prep. My last hard workout went very well on Sunday (exactly 2 weeks before) so now it's all easier workouts from here on in. I am not sure exactly what I'll do for the next couple hard days but now it's all about keeping my body in tune and avoiding that sluggish feeling that a lot of people tend to get with tapering. I don't plan to drop mileage drastically or completely stop working out, but the workouts themselves will get easier. I will try to maintain the same frequency and schedule of running just to maintain some routine and not through my body off. Finally, the last few days will be very easy light jogging and the final variable to hope for is good weather the morning of the race. Chicago can be iffy, but it has had a pretty good track record the last few marathons so hopefully it all works out. 

My plan for the race: I think I'll try to start at 5:20-5:25s and see how that goes. Ideally I would like to have a group to run with so I can reserve mental energy for the last 10 miles or so, get in the draft and settle in to that pace without having to push at all. I expect the first 10 miles to go by pretty quickly, but somewhere between 10-15 I'll start to get a little tired. Between 15-20 I need to be mentally prepared for a bad patch or two, and somewhere in that stretch I'll need to start pushing hard. The last 10k, of course, is all about running as hard as possible. If I can run smartly and evenly through halfway in 1:10 I think that will set me up for a good 2nd half. This is all uncharted territory for me though, so all of this in most definitely conjecture. Looking back, I can confidently say that I have prepared to the best of my ability. I've put in the long efforts a bit slower than goal pace, I've put in good speedwork, and gotten in two runs of almost 3 hours. Mileage has been relatively low for me, and doubling regularly has been out of the question, but judging by the workouts I think that I have a good base of marathon-specific work behind me. Next Sunday I'll find out exactly how prepared I am.