One week left

Well the marathon is officially one week away. I can't believe it is almost here. After 18 weeks of training I know I am ready!! I started training December 6th. I am following Hal Higdon's novice training program. I really feel prepared I just hope the weather will cooperate. Right now they are saying that there is a 30% chance of rain and thunderstorms, but hopefully that will pass. I am hoping to run the marathon in 4 hours. That is big goal for me. If the weather is good (for me good would be mid 70s and light wind) then I should be able to accomplish my goal. Through all my reading the week prior to the race is very important. You have to eat right, drink alot and rest. So this week I hope to be relaxed and well prepared. Of course I start the week off tomorrow with a job interview. So I am nervous about that too. This week is so weird because I am use to putting in 40 miles a week and this week I am only doing 9 miles. So by the time sunday comes I will be ready to run. I am so addicted to running that if I don't run everyday I feel incomplete.

Just an update on how my training program has been the past 5 months. I have ran a total of 434 miles. Overall the training was pretty easy. I hit a wall at Week 12. I think I was just getting bored with the route I was running and tired of running by myself. I trained completely by myself. I joined the Mckinney Running club 2 weeks ago and ran with them one saturday. So hopefully I can meet someone that runs at my pace so I could have someone to run with. The biggest struggle I had was trying to fit in all the running with life. Trying to juggle kids, husband, work, to-dos, and then running. All I can say is thank god for my treadmill. I couldn't have trained without it. I do not enjoy running on the treadmill, it is just not natural for me to run on it. I would either run early in the morning or after the kids went to bed. My husband is a huge support for me. Every opportunity he had to watch the kids he did so I could run. I did all my long runs on Saturday mornings. I would wake up 2 hours before I had to run and eat a peanut butter cliff bar, banana and bottle of water. I would then go back to bed and wake up an hour later and start stretching and getting ready to run. I would try to leave the house by 7, sometimes earlier. I only had two injuries during training. At week 10 I got hip bursitis so I had to ice a lot and take ibuprofen. Luckily it healed on itself after a couple of weeks. It probably would have heeled faster if I would have stopped running but I couldn't do that. The other injury is a funny story. I went for my 20 mile run at 530 am. Everything was going good until mile 5. It was dark and I couldn't see that well so I didn't see the two different levels of concrete on the sidewalk. I fell face first into the concrete. Luckily my hand caught my fall. I immediately started looking around to make sure nobody saw me. It was so early so nobody was out and about. All I did was scrape up my palm. It could have been way worse!!! Let's hope I don't do that next weekend!!