It only took two things to happen today to get me pumped up for the ING Hartford Marathon. First, I had a great 21 mile run this morning, despite the heat. I was a little worried last night when I saw the morning temperature being forecast as 72 degrees.. I was NOT expecting that. I managed to take in some extra fluids and get up early to beat the sunshine, which I pretty much did. I got up at 5:15am and was on the road for about 5:35am, which meant I had just over an hour until the sun came up, but it actually didn’t come out until much later due to some clouds. I had about 6 miles to go when I actually saw it for the first time, and it got warm, REAL fast ..

The pace I ran this morning was much faster than I expect to run in 2 weeks, but that was my plan. By running faster than my goal, it builds me some confidence that I can complete the race in at least a 4:05 .. which is my goal since i’m the pace leader.

Since i’m on the topic of pace leader, this leads me to the second thing that happened to get me pumped up for the race .. I got my “4:05 Pace Lead” fluorescent green singlet today in the mail … all the pace leaders got an email a few days ago that they had been sent out, but I didn’t expect it so soon. I know I can’t wear it until the race (bad karma), but its just like getting your race packet the day before the race, you just get excited.

I only have a few days of actual training left as I prepare to taper for the race .. I have a few speed runs, a tempo run and a mid long run left before tapering off into the weekend so I can rest up.. its always a challenge running the second marathon of the season so close to the first because you really don’t get to recover fully from the first … at least the 3rd marathon will be 5 weeks out from Hartford, so I can rest up a little more.

I’ve had a challenging week with my computer and technologies which caused me to not be able to post .. my primary computer got a real bad virus on it on Tuesday. It was so bad that I couldn’t do anything on it, and then eventually it stopped booting .. and then we had a terrible storm on Wednesday night, we lost power and when the power came back, my wireless router was fried. So by Thursday, I had no computer and no home network so I had to take some time to repair everything. We’re almost back fully …

So this week I have a tour scheduled at the Human Performance Center to see their facility .. i’m excited to see it and although its a little pricy, it seems worth it. I also get to see the chiropractor as well this week .. and get hooked up with my nutritionist… it appears its going to be another long week.

Maybe a bike ride tomorrow? I dunno, we’ll see…