22 miles tomorrow....

.... and I don't really know how it's going to go. I've tried to eat right the last day and a half or so, and will be ready to eat and drink on the run. Hopefully it will go better than the 20 miler 2 weeks ago. It can't go much worse unless I fall and break my ankle. I'm going to bed now, so I should be well rested. It will be hot, though. Not looking forward to that at all. And my hip isn't really right, still. I'm going to slow down and try to reduce pounding on it. But going slower means I'm out there longer. Catch 22.

I was talking to some folks tonight, and the marathon came up, as it always does these days. (Perhaps I'm too focused on it? Yes, but other people bring it up and ask questions. That's what happened today. Twice.) Anyway, the topic was how fast I would run the marathon. One said half marathon time multiplied by 2, plus 10 minutes. That would be 4:02:24. The other said half marathon pace plus 30 seconds. That would be 4:05:35. My expectation is that I'll go significantly slower than that. There would be a certain panache to having such a (to me) fast time. But I really truly don't care. Sure, fast is good. But finish is more important. I definitely plan to walk longer and more slowly through water stops. In the half, I really wanted to finish under 2 hours. That was a very clear number, and it would have "felt bad" to finish outside 2 hours. But to me there's no real psychological difference between a 4:05 and a 4:15 or 4:20. If I go over 4:30 I'll be a little bit disappointed, I suppose because once again that's an identifiable timing break point. What it boils down to is my hip. If I feel OK, I'll go a little faster. If the hip is bothering me, I'll go a bit slower.

Anyway, I'm hitting the hay now. Fingers crossed that tomorrow goes OK. If it doesn't, I'm going to start worrying about the race. It's just a few weeks away.

Later...