Sometimes, your marathon preparation goes perfectly, your taper is phenomenal, and hopefully your race goes off without a hitch. Sometimes, things are not so smooth. I still expect my race to go off without a hitch, but my taper has certainly proven interesting.

The general goal was to keep up with 50 miles per week through this week, and then workout as normal through Wednesday or Thursday. My mileage this week may have been near 50 miles, but only if you count a couple of miles of hiking and lugging sign posts around the woods after getting done with my run. Of course, whether I cut back on the mileage or not is a moot point, since I followed up the run and hike with 3 or 4 hours of raking about 2/3 of my lawn. Maine foliage is beautiful at this time of year, but raking up after a storm is less than easy.

I was out on the Bradbury Bruiser course today, and it is looking great. The race directors spent a lot of time raking anywhere that the course was not obvious and it is looking good. After running the course today (I skipped the “O” trail loop given the marathon in a week) they divided the course up into sections and sent people out to leave sign posts and flags to mark the trail.

The trail is in great shape. Where there are leaves down, it is still obvious where the trail is. It is relatively dry despite the rain that we have had recently. Jamie Anderson wrote up his thoughts from the day and included an elevation profile for those who want to see how flat the course is. Bear in mind that the scale of the profile only goes from 240 feet to 400 feet above sea level at the two extremes.

For anybody running next weekend, good luck and have fun. I would love to be there if I had not already made plans to be out of state for the Marine Corps Marathon. I’m looking forward to reading race stories, so feel free to send me a link or an email with your thoughts on the day.