The day before

Eleven months ago, in my second post ever on this blog, I announced my intention to run the Twin Cities Maraton in 2005. In March of this year, I reannounced that intention after having taken 3 months off from running. Tomorrow is the day.

A central piece of advice in the book I read to learn how to prepare was that, for your first marathon, forget about a time goal. Instead, make the only goal "to finish." I have kept that advice in mind, but I still trained with the hope that I could do it in under 4 hours.

If tomorrow was going to be "average" for Minnesota on this date (i.e., about 45-50 degrees at the start and about 60-65 degrees at the finish), I would think that under 4 hours would be possible for me, although certainly not a cinch. However, the forecast is for 65-70 degrees at the start, 75-80 degrees at the finish, unusually high humidity, and limited cloud cover.

At the "tips for 1st timers" discussion that I went to today the message was redundant: "It is going to be hot, so go slower than you might want to." I have decided that they are right. Thus, I'm going to abandon any sort of time goal and focus only on the "to finish" goal. I'm also going to try to enjoy the beautiful course and the 250,000 spectators along the way.

Check back later if you want to learn how it went.