We’re now in the second full week of October and this is the last month for which I can prepare for the Philadelphia marathon. By the end of this month I begin my taper for Nov 21st. I’m sort of looking forward to this because I’ve been feeling somewhat burned out recently. That’s actually not a good sign, being that the last time I felt like this before my marathon, I had a disaster of a race.

Not only that, but I would have liked to have started this month off with a bit more confidence in my preparation. In some ways, I feel mostly prepared when I think back to the half marathon PR I had in August, and the 18 mile tune up in September.

But, what’s key to my confidence is the 20 mile runs I’ll do at marathon pace towards the end of my training. 20 miles fast is something I need to believe I can easily do before going into the race. It worked very well for me for both Boston and New York.

So, for October, I decided I would get in at least four good long runs at a fast pace. There are five weekends in October this year.

Well, before the first weekend, I came down with a cold and had to skip running for two days. And, Saturday was one of the days. But luckily, I had enough in me to make it down to the Paine to Pain half marathon for a fun run through the trails. I didn’t have plans to race this, and coming off a cold, I wasn’t in condition either. But I did tack on 5 miles before at least, so an easy 18 miles for the day was better than no long run at all.

So, for the following weekend I had the Westchester half marathon planned on Sunday for quite some time. Since I wasn’t able to get in the kind of long run I wanted to the week prior, I decided to skip the Westchester half in favor of doing 20 miles fast on Saturday. It was tougher than I thought it would be, but after completing 20.25 miles at 7:04 pace I believed I did the right thing by skipping the race… Up until the next day.

Sunday morning, with all the excitement of the Chicago marathon going on, and the Westchester half down the block from me, I decided to take an easy run from my house down to the finish of the race. It was such a great day for a race, and boy, did I have regrets I wasnt racing that day along with everyone else.

I saw my friend Mark, who’ve I’ve done 4 of the NYRR half marathons with, and was really happy to hear he blew his PR out of the water. It’s hard to admit this, but I was also a bit jealous. Not just of his success, but of all the finishers standing around enjoying the finish of their race. It really was the perfect day and perfect weather for a race. Conditions I havent had all summer. I knew this course well and could almost feel what it would have been like to race it. It wasn’t until that point did I realize how much I actually wanted to do this half. I realized I missed an opportunity to see what I can really do in ideal conditions, and to make matters worse, I realized I wasn’t getting another chance this season. Summer is over, and fall will be over by the time I do Philly.

Since then, for the first time, I’ve sort of been feeling like this preparation is becoming a chore. Being able to do these fast long runs on the weekend was something I usually looked forward to. Hopefully, that desire will return by next weekend.
I still have three more of these to do before I can start cutting back.