Are we there yet?

Tick tick tick tick. I'm ready to go, set to run, eager to get the hellouttahere. Counting down the days to leaving: 4. Counting down the days to the marathon: 6. Counting down the days to driving myself insane: -2.

We had a great taper run on Saturday. Bree, Anita and I met in the cool autumn air at the Lafayette-Moraga Trail for a planned 6 miler. I was afraid to do more than that because I'm still feeling the effects of the fall and didn't want to risk hurting myself more. It went quite well, despite a twinge (ok, a pain) or two in my knees. We walked a little and I determined that running hurt less, so we went back to our run:walk. As usual on the L-M Trail we did negative splits - gotta love that downgrade return trip.

We've been (obsessively) checking the weather forecast for the race and we really should just stop looking until Thursday, it's been changing that much. One thing is almost certain, or as certain as weather forecasting ever gets: it will be much cooler there this year than it has the previous two. In fact, we might not be able to wear our matching sleeveless tops. The current forecast (there I go, looking anyway) shows it might not even get out of the 40s. Perfect running weather but not for a tank top. If the rain prediction gets higher than 50% again we might even have to wear long sleeves. Rain hurts!

I've been doing my visualization that I always do before a race but I've added a little something. I hope that picturing myself not toppling over will help me stay on my feet. Falling in front of 40,000 other runners would be much more embarrassing that falling in front of two friends and a couple of fishermen. But the majority of my visualization has me comfortably running miles 20-26.2, speeding across the finish line, feeling great.

And heading straight for the beer tent.