Well, it has been a very busy day as I prepare to head down to Providence this weekend for the Cox Rhode Island Marathon. I ran an easy 2 and a half miles at lunch time to stretch the legs out, and despite my best efforts to leave work 15 or 20 minutes early I was in a groove and wanted to finish the project I was working on so I left 15 minutes late. (This is not unusual, unfortunately.)

My plans for the weekend originally called for staying with a friend and his brother down in the area. My friend decided to buy a house today, though, so he didn’t really want to go down. Not a problem, because I had another friend that was running the marathon and I was going to split a hotel room with him. Unfortunately, he got injured. So I was back to staying with the original friend’s brother, but he is now going to be out of town this weekend. I found that out tonight, so I got a hold of my injured friend and he canceled the hotel room this morning. It made for an interesting start to my evening. I did sort out my hotel arrangements eventually, though, and I’ll be staying at the original hotel after all. Hopefully I can still take advantage of the 3:00 checkout time.

If anybody is going to be in Providence this weekend and wants to try to meet up, send me an email or leave a comment on this article. I will try to check it before I leave tomorrow morning, and will probably check it tomorrow afternoon or evening after I get to the hotel.

I do not have an overly specific race plan for this weekend. My original range of goals involved an 8 minute span, but since one of my teammates did so well in the Olympic Trials that I now have about a 2 minute goal span. I am going to aim for running at around 6:00 to 6:10 pace and hoping that if I do wind up blowing up in the latter stages of the race that I at least run a PR. That shouldn’t be too tough, and if everything breaks well for me then I’ll make my goals.

As you can see from the elevation profile, there’s a few good climbers but the course never gets over 150 feet above sea level. I’m hoping that my winter hill running through the snow will make this seem like a flat enough course with just enough variation to keep my muscles from getting overworked.

I had a couple of good weeks at about 60 miles since I ran ING Georgia, but my cold came back in the past week and I have been fighting off my cough. It is mostly gone now and I don’t expect it to be a factor during the race, but it did cause me to taper a little more than I would have liked to have before this race. Better to be a little undertrained than at all overtrained, though, so let’s hope I feel nice and rested come Sunday. There have been plenty of phantom and taper pains over the past week or so, but I don’t expect any trouble from my legs on Sunday.

Wish me luck!