Had the marathon dress rehearsal. Put on the whole gear -- cap, headband under it, neon green tech shirt with white singlet over it, tights with RaceReady shorts over it, tucked my car key in the car key pocket, carried a water bottle in Tyler's fanny pack, and headed for the River Trail. Stretched when I got there, but the legs did not want to loosen. Weather was clear and sunny but temps were around 45, I guess. Even after my three-mile warmup run down to the FOP clubhouse, the legs were still tight, and I stretched some more before heading back.Once I headed back, had a little trouble with my pacing; the planned 8-minute miles became 7:39 and 7:42 (that, ladies and germs, is why I need a pace bunny); darn near a tempo run instead of MP. Anyway, once I slowed to the cooldown pace, I jogged back and forth across the Main Street Bridge, and reminded myself once again why I don't like the MSB; that walkway is awfully narrow and that steel railing, combined with my acrophobia, gave me the willies. I could just imagine falling over that rail into the river below, and people who fall into that river tend to be carried out in bodybags. Yikes. Anyway, got back and forth with no incident and finished the run.
I guess the hay really is in the barn now. A couple of short, slow jogs left, maybe some strides on Friday, and then show up at the starting line Saturday morning in Memphis. I guess the good part is, if I had trouble slowing down to an 8:00 pace, the real thing maybe won't feel difficult Saturday. If I actually ran a marathon at 7:40.5 pace, that would be about a 3:21.
Just got an interesting piece of information. It seems active.com has a database which ranks times in races all over the country, so you can look up how your marathon time ranks among 24-year-old females in Utah if that's what you happen to be. Since I happen to be a 47/48 year old male in Arkansas, I looked up the rankings in all five distances I've run this year -- 5K, 10K, 20K, half and full marathon. Turns out I'm in the top 100 in all of them for 45-49 year old men, except for 20K, where they do not have any results at all recorded for Arkansas. My crash-and-burn marathon is 71st. My Gallowalked 5K is 92nd. My Gallowalked 10K is 39th. And my half-marathon time -- gun time, not chip -- is 19th. NINETEENTH. I don't think I've been 19th in the state in anything since my PSAT score in 1977 was third in the state, or so I was told. Nineteenth doesn't get me anything, whereas that PSAT got me a National Merit Scholarship, but it's still surprising and a bit gratifying. And for 47-year-olds only, my time was SIXTH. The first-place time? A guy I went to high school with, who was born the same day I was (the half marathon was the day before our 48th birthdays) and didn't even run track in high school. Of course, he beat my butt by 17 minutes at Conway (and his marathon best beat mine by an hour and a half, although I expect to close that gap considerably on Saturday). | 
