All Set

Tomorrow morning at 8:20am I will be running the Fifth Third Bank 25K River Run.  I am pretty darn excited.

I remember this time last year I didn't know what to expect.  Since then I have completed a fantastic 10K Mud Run, a half marathon and a full marathon.  I have logged many miles with these ol' feet of mine, and I feel more physically and mentally prepared than I did last year.

I went to the expo and picked up my bib this morning.  I got there just as the doors were opening so there was a line outside.  I was maybe #176 (just a guess).  The funny thing is that people stayed in line formation until they were through the vestibule and inside the exhibit hall.  Some people were slowly meandering in front of the information booth and the line was still intact.  I think I was the first to break out of the line as I scooted out and into the exhibit hall to get my race bib. It was kind weird, but neat in the same way because everyone was so polite and didn't want to cut in front of anyone else (except me, Ha!).

I came home and gathered some of my stuff.

• Shoes -- check
• Bib -- check
• Gu -- check
• Spi belt -- check
• Hat -- check
• Garmin -- check after it is fully charged (this will be my first race with my Garmin)

What am I missing.........oh, yeah, clothes.  I am going to utilize my preferred attire and go ninja style -- black shirt and black shorts.  I was just too lazy to go get them for this photo.

The weather forecast looks like this

Yup, an 80% chance of rain. Hence the visor.  

The temperature is perfect, but please, please don't rain.

(Incidentally, the outside temperature reading in my car read -13 degrees today.  Um, I think that is off just a bit.)

I HATE running in wet shoes.  

I decided I am going to line up at the back of the 9 minute/mile pace group just ahead of the 9:30's.  Hopefully they will carry me through to my finish time of 2:25 (or less!).

I really took this tapering stuff to heart this past week.  I only ran 5 miles.  Oops.  I did do strength training two days though so that counts for something.  

One of the runs was yesterday and it was gross outside, as in 78* and humid.  Now I know that is normal weather for some of you, but when you go from basically 40 and 50 degree days to 70's and 80's practically overnight it is HARD to adjust.  I felt like I was trudging through the swamp.

Off to stimulate the economy and hydrate via lemonade from the neighbor kid's lemonade stand.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend.

May you Tri and Run hard.