Four days until race day! I love the feeling of pre-marathon excitement mixed with trepidation about the final 12km. But I've forgotten enough about the misery of the Vancouver marathon in May this year that I am happily looking forward to the Victoria marathon.
Training has been a bit mixed - as noted before here, I didn't feel right pretty much from the start in the Vancouver marathon. And in the months since then I've been a bit tired and flat, running some of my slowest times in my speed sessions since Pat Carroll became my coach in June 2005.
Both Pat and I have been at a loss to find a reason, but perhaps driving across Canada by myself, another 4000km roadtrip and a slew of international visitors required more energy than I realized. In the last two months, the stressful process of buying a house and starting renovations has also left me more tired than usual obviously.
As always, I have thoroughly enjoyed my training - running is just such an important part of my life as it really helps me clear or organize my mind and recharge mentally. As Tim also decided to enter the Victoria marathon, we've been doing our long runs together which of course makes it more fun.
Since Vancouver I've only done two races, a 10k mon the road (finishing 90secs slower than most recent ones) and a 15km trail race. Last Friday, I had for the first time in six months a speed session that made sense with my times earlier in the year. While that's very promising, it makes it hard to set a goal time for this marathon.
Pat and I agreed on aiming for 3:10 and see how that goes. My PB is 3:08:48, set in Canberra in April 2007, and my most recent time is 3:12:26 (Vancouver in May 2008).
I cannot wait for race day, whatever it will bring. I love a challenge and a marathon will always provide that!
The forecast for Victoria on Sunday is for a dry sunny day with temperatures between 5 and 10 degrees.
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