The race plan is, there is no plan

I woke up this morning and literally, my first thought was - "what day is it? It's Thursday...Thursday Friday Saturday....omg, 3 days left until the marathon. Holy crap." I'm getting nervous. My legs are antsy and I feel like I need to be constantly stretching or moving or rubbing or rolling them to stay halfway sane. I told the BF we couldn't have split pea soup for dinner because it wasn't carbo-licious enough [we compromised and I'm just planning on eating a lot of bread along with it. A lot. :)]

So yeah. Nerves. Wow. Anyway, I'll try to spew some nonsense out on this blog and maybe that will help me calm down haha. Yesterday I went out for a "dress rehearsal" run with Kelly. We did 6 miles at 8 am [race time], wearing the clothes/shoes we planned on wearing for the race. What's that you say? You want to know what I'm wearing? OK, I'll tell you. :) My basic outfit is my electric blue Nike tempo shorts with my WTC singlet. I sort of wanted to wear the tiger shorts, but they tend to ride up and I just don't feel like dealing with that for that long of a race. The singlet is pretty much a no brainer since there is no way I would be running a marathon right now without my past 4 years with the WTC, so I will be proudly representing the club. I will also be rocking my ONE pair of technical socks [they were part of a goody bag from a 100K relay that I did last year, along with a long sleeve tech shirt, dartboard (??), and CHEESE & SAUSAGE BOX! Totally worth running the 6 am shift 10K after a night out :)] and my beautiful Mizuno Wave Inspire 5's.

So then there's the cold weather issue. Seriously, the weather forecast for race day keeps getting WORSE! We are now looking at a high of 46, wind (~20 mph), and rain (70% chance). Which is pretty much, the most god-awful thing I can imagine. Because I REALLY needed something else to add to my nerves! Anyway, I will be getting my arm warmers in the mail today and if things are really bad, I'll be wearing gloves as well, at least for awhile. It's really, REALLY going to suck if it's that windy and raining, but I guess there's no point in adding layers if it's raining since they're just going to get wet.

OK - digression over. Anyway, the run went well yesterday, and it was actually around 40 when we started so it was good running in that for temperature. We ended up running quite a bit faster than goal pace (right around 8 flat) and again, it felt really easy, so dear god, I am going to need to rein it in especially the first few miles when everyone is excited and is just shooting out of the start corral like cheetahs on crack.

Which leads me to my race "plan"! And my plan pretty much boils down to this: Have fun the first half, race the second. My goal is to come through the halfway fresh and awesome and feeling like "hell YES I can run another half marathon, but faster!" The first loop is going to be all about enjoying the course, enjoying the moment, relaxing, staying calm, and just letting it flow. But once I hit that 13.1, that's when I'm going to really get my head in the game. That doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly take off, but I'm going to actually kind of start paying attention to my splits and if I'm feeling good, start picking it up a bit. Really...that's about it. I'm going to try to run by feel more than by the watch and yeah...I guess we'll just see what happens!

I guess that's really all I've got. The butterflies in my stomach are already unstoppable...

3 DAYS UNTIL BAYSTATE!!