It's All Over Now, Except the Racing

I always seem to have problems with motivation once I get close to a marathon. Here I am less than three weeks out from my goal race and haven't felt like doing anything all week long. I guess you could say that's all part of the taper, even though I'm not officially starting the taper until next week. All my runs this week have been generally shorter than normal although I have felt pretty good on them once I dragged my butt out the door. I should wind up around 90 miles for the week, which in any other year would be great, but the bar has been raised this year, so it has become merely adequate.

For the most part, I'm a pretty positive person, but reading through my last couple of months of of blog entries I realize that I have been kind of a nut. To be honest, other than a training diary I'm not even sure there is much value in this thing at the moment. I started this blog to document my training, get feedback on it, and maybe motivate some other runners out there. Unfortunately, I've been so deliquent in updating the thing that it really has become rather unproductive. Now some of that was caused by things outside of my control, but mostly it has been that I just haven't had much fun running lately. To be honest, I can't wait for the marathon to get here so I can be done with running for a week or so and get some sort of passion back for it.

Yesterday I did two runs. The first was 7 miles at an easy pace during lunch and then after work I did 21 miles. The long run went good. I felt extremely comfortable the whole time and I would up averaging just under 7 minute miles. The 21 miler was my last official longrun, although I may do one more 17 miler early next week, depending on how I recover from the half-marathon that I'm doing on Sunday. Ah yes, the half-marathon on Sunday. I originally thought this would be a nice confidence booster prior to the marathon and to give me a final gauge as to what I could realistically expect. Now I'm kind of nervous about it. If I do, for whatever reason, run badly on Sunday, my confidence is going to be shot for the big race. It's tough being such basket case. Really it is.

I went out and bought my marathon shoes today in hopes that they will bring some motivation. I got the Brooks Axiom 2...my second pair of Axioms. I really do like these shoes. They are the lightest pair of shoes that I've ever worn (although I'm sure there are lighter ones out there), yet they still have a good amount of support to them. The last time I went to get a pair of these, they didn't have any in stock, so I went with the Mizuno Wave Inspire instead. Not a bad shoe, but man, when I put on those Axioms today, my feet were happy. My wife is going to be happy too, because, man, those Mizunos acquired quite a funk to them over the past month or so.